A Sage Among Wizards
by Kythorian
Summary: An old and dying Naruto throws his soul forward through time in order to prevent the Juubi's escape upon his death.  His soul merges with that of 15 month old Harry Potter in the moment the Killing Curse is reflected.  Super!Harry.
1. Soul Fishing

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N:**

Summary: An old and dying Naruto throws his soul forward through time in order to prevent the Juubi's escape upon his death. His soul merges with that of 15 month old Harry Potter in the moment the Killing Curse is reflected. Super!Harry

Pairing: I have not decided on this yet. It will not be Harry x Hermione though. She will be a close friend, but as much as I like that pairing with cannon!Harry, I can't see the two of them working as a couple with this very ooc version of Harry, though it would still be better than Hermione x Ron. After some thought, it will almost certainly be one of Tonks, Fleur, or Luna, but I have not decided. Feel free to leave suggestions or just let me know if you don't like that pairing. Romance is not going to be all that major a part of the story regardless though, and will not start at all until fourth year.

Warnings: This will be a Super!Harry story. He will be immensely powerful by the time he goes to Hogwarts, much less later. That's not to say there won't be conflict, but the direct physical combat will generally be very one-sided and short. If that's not the type of story you like, feel free to not read, but please don't flame about it.

**Chapter 1: Soul Fishing**

"Grandfather, I still don't think this is a good idea." The worried old man speaking didn't look like he was young enough to have a living grandfather. In fact, he looked at least as old, if not older, than the bedridden man he referred to as grandfather. "If anyone has earned their place in the Kami's realm, it is you. You have protected the world for your entire life. Someone else can handle the Bijuu now."

The other man in the room was very old with entirely white hair held back with a very worn forehead protector with the symbol of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. But in spite of his clearly advanced age, he still appeared to be in admirable physical shape, if less so than he once was. He sat partially propped up in his hospital bed as he continued the same discussion, or more accurately argument, he had every time he had recently spoken with his closest living relative.

"You are right that I have lived a long and full life Hiruzen. Several long and full lives by most people's measure. I am one hundred and ninety years old, for Kami's sake. I am not afraid of death. But I have spent by entire life protecting people from the power of the Bijuu. And I have spent a good portion of the last decade finding a way to continue this protection after my death. And I have one. I can do what the Sage of the Six Paths failed to do, and prevent the Bijuu from being released upon my body's death. How can I refuse to do so?"

The younger man sighed. The two of them had covered all of this in multiple earlier discussions. He knew that Naruto would never budge once he was convinced something was the right thing to do. But he couldn't keep himself from trying. "So you will just throw your soul into this timestream, with no way of determining where or when you will end up, or what will happen when you arrive? Besides, you are basically killing whoever's body you end up in. Can you do that to an innocent child?"

Naruto frowned. This was the one thing that did bother him, but he couldn't let it stop him. "Not killing. Not exactly. Our souls will merge into one. You are right that my soul is so much more than that of a young child's that the vast majority of the newly formed soul will come from mine, but it still isn't killing. And even if it was, as much as I don't like it, I do understand that sometimes people, even innocents, must be sacrificed in order to save others. I was the Hokage for over forty years, if you remember. And I have killed an almost literally uncountable number of others in my most of two centuries as a ninja. Rarely a young child, or not on purpose, but still, the principle remains. Sometimes terrible things are necessary. And on the scale of it, this isn't even that terrible."

He continued after a moments pause, "Or at least it's not when you consider the alternative. Regardless of any possible preventative measures I could take, it is virtually certain that any other path I take will result in the Bijuu being free within a handful of generations at the most. I know that even the stories of the terrible acts the tailed beasts committed while free were fading by the time you were born, but it is an evil I cannot allow if I can do something about it.

I could split the Juubi as the Sage of the Six Paths did, which would make the Bijuu beatable, but too many lives are always lost in such things. I could create a series of behavior modifications with the Sharingan, but that would never last. The tailed beast's chakra will inevitably corrupt whatever form I created for them. I could even go ahead and make another nine jinchuuriki to hold them in my stead, but as I said, that system would never last more than a few generations before they were released, or their container was killed and they reformed. There is no possible lasting safety from the Bijuu if I allow their escape after I die, and this is the only way to prevent that."

The slightly younger old man sighed, but pressed on in spite of knowing he was defeated. He knew this would be his last chance to convince his grandfather. "What if you taught someone the seal sequence you used to use to take another's kekkei genkai? They could take your bloodlines just as you took them in your youth. It would kill you, but with you dying anyway..." He hesitated and gave a tiny shrug, before continuing, "And another with your bloodlines, especially the Rinnegan, could take the Juubi and hold it as you do. I'm certain that one of my grandsons could be trusted with this, and they could pass it down once they approach death as well.

This would have the added benefit of maintaining the peace you have established. There has been no great ninja war since the Fourth. You know that this is because of you. You declared there would be no more war between the villages, and there is none with the power to go against your word, even now. For that matter, from what I have read, there are only about half as many ninja as there were in your youth. The world is just a lot safer than it once was and fewer are needed, in spite of higher populations. That all goes away with your death. How many will die once there is no longer any with the power which everyone knows cannot be resisted to maintain the peace. How long will it take before war breaks out once again?"

"No. I have sworn I would never teach that, nor will I allow my power to be passed on", Naruto responded with a strong frown. "As much as I trust your judgment, or how much I trust your grandchildren or anyone else, you can never be entirely certain what someone will do with this sort of power once they have it. And if not them, all it would take is one mistake in judgment as they pass the power to another. Even a good man can do great evil in a misbegotten attempt at creating a utopia or some such. Or if they feel that the world would simply function better united. Or any of a hundred different reasons why even a good man might be willing to use my full power with less than the greatest restraint. And the damage they could do would be so much worse than that were even one to be corrupted, as great power is wont to do. I will not allow it.

But I did not ask you to come here to argue things we have already argued about though. I asked you to come so that I could say goodbye. I have said goodbye to the others already, those few who remain who I am still close to. So it is time for us to say goodbye as well. This is the only way that the power of the Bijuu can remain safely contained for all time. It may not be a perfectly ideal solution, but it is one that will save countless lives down through however many centuries that will come before my soul is reborn."

Growing desperate to dissuade his grandfather, Hiruzen continued, "But you don't have any idea where or when you will be reborn. You said you had no way of controlling that, now or when you are in the timestream. What if you get put into a situation that just makes things much worse somehow? You have no way of knowing what the result of this will be. Why take such a risk? Yes, there will eventually be danger if the Bijuu are released, but it is now well recorded how to deal with them should it really be needed, which wouldn't likely come for centuries. You can't know that things won't turn out much worse taking this path, since you have no way of controlling what happens after you use this ability."

Naruto nodded in agreement. "True enough. I have no way of knowing, and no way of controlling anything that happens after I release my soul and everything I have linked to my soul from my physical body. But the way the jutsu is set up will cast that upon Destiny. I was born a Child of Destiny and Prophesy. There will come a time when such a one is born again. When the power I have gained, and the knowledge I have amassed is needed in this world again, beyond simply to keep the threat of the Bijuu at bay. It is then that Destiny will release my soul into a new body. I have no idea when this will be. It could be next year, or it could be in a thousand.

But Destiny, as terrible as it can make your life as you live it, has a certain method to its apparent randomness. Certainly no guarantee that things will turn out well, but I highly doubt I will be put in a situation in which I am reborn and instantly killed, releasing the Juubi upon the masses. That doesn't seem like it would fit with a Child of Destiny, whatever that Child's ultimate fate. And anything else, I can deal with as it arrives."

With one last possibility, Hiruzen suggested, "What if I did the same thing and went with you? Or perhaps more than just me. From what you said, it seems likely we would be put into the same time, with Destiny guiding our soul's placement. It would probably be easier if there were at least some of us from this life to help you in your next."

With a shake of his head, Naruto said, "No. First because you would not be able. I have calculated the chakra requirements for the technique, and I doubt anyone other than a jinchuuriki, and powerful one at that, would be able to give the chakra required. Maybe if someone with very high level Kage level reserves opened all eight gates, ate some food pills, and drank Hero Water, they _might_ have enough chakra, and _might_ last long enough to complete the technique before all of that killed them. Though more likely, their chakra control would be so worthless with that amount of chakra and no practice controlling it that they wouldn't be able to do anything at all with it. But even if others could, I would not have them come with me. They might or might not end up in the same time as me. More likely not, given the near infinite range of time that exists. I also don't want this technique to ever have a chance to spread. It is a sort of method of immortality, but shouldn't be used as such.

Which actually reminds me of an additional reason this is a good idea. I have always been a bit worried of the possibility of someone bringing me back with the Impure World Resurrection after I die. In spite of my best efforts, knowledge of that particular kinjutsu has never been entirely stamped out, and I would make an enormously tempting target. Which I both don't want to experience, and I don't want anyone to have such power over others, especially the sort of people who are generally willing to use a technique like that. But since my soul will have been thrown forward in time, this won't be a possibility. The Sage of the Six Paths managed to do something to prevent techniques like that from working as well, but I'm not sure what it was, and this will work just as well."

Hiruzen sagged in defeat. He had known for weeks that his arguments would not succeed. But he felt he had to try. Naruto had done more, and sacrificed more through his life for others and for what he felt was his duty than anyone else living. It wasn't right that he be forced into an eternal duty to remain ever vigilant against something he never really had a choice about from his birth. But there was nothing that could be done. Even as sick as he was, Naruto would never submit to something he didn't agree to. The only thing to do was to wish him luck and pray that he may find happiness in his next life.

"Very well grandfather. I...I'll miss you. And I love you. And I will make sure that people remember you for what you have done for them."

Naruto now smiled as he responded. "Thank you. I will miss you as well. Along with everyone else, but most of those that I truly treasured as my precious people have already passed on. You, I wish I could stay here for though. But as that choice has been taken from me, it is time for me to move on. I am just doing it a little differently than most do." His smile grew. "Not that anyone should be surprised by that. I have always done things a little differently."

Naruto and Hiruzen shared a long hug before Naruto was finally released with a sad smile shared between the two of them. Hiruzen left his hand sitting on his grandfather's shoulder. "Is there anything else I can do for you? Can I help you to wherever you plan on completing your seals, or get any medicine for you? I could even help with some of the sealing, if you would like. I may not be nearly as skilled or knowledgeable as you, but I am a Seal Master in my own right, and could at least help with some of the basic structuring of the seals."

Naruto patted the hand on his shoulder as he responded, "Thank you, but no. I can just Kamui over to my room, and I do all my sealing these days with chakra strings anyway, so my difficulty moving much scarcely matters. But I wouldn't mind spending another hour or two talking of old times. You know how old people get." He gave a grin that still remained in some indescribable way fox-like, in spite of the Kyubi having long since been destroyed when the Juubi was recreated. But even that smile kept a hint of sadness remaining to be seen by those who really knew him well enough to see through even Naruto's well perfected masks.

And so most of Naruto's last hours in the Elemental Nations passed, reminiscing of times long since passed, and hopes for the future and for their descendents. But eventually it was time, so after one final hug and not a few tears, Naruto briefly activated his Sharingan eyes and warped space to put him in the ritual room he had created for himself decades before.

The room was a perfect cube made entirely of white marble walls with no door. Or connecting building or tunnels of any kind, for that matter. In fact, the room existed about a half mile below the surface of the earth in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing connecting it to anything. Not that anyone else knew that. Naruto actually had to create oxygen from time to time while he was here, which was one of the more amusing uses of the Creation of All Things technique. But even for someone with his skill, not to mention a dozen clones, it took almost seven hours to carefully guide the sealing ink into the awesomely complicated sealing structures which covered every inch of all of the walls, floor, and ceiling.

After verifying every one of those inches, Naruto carefully lifted himself up until he hovered in the exact center of the room purely using his mastery over the wind and gravity elements, and began a series of over one thousand hand-seals, while simultaneously carefully pouring massive amounts of chakra into specific sections of the sealing structure in order to carefully create one of the most complicated techniques ever activated.

Finally, the technique was complete. And as Naruto's body died and his soul was ripped from it and mostly out of reality as it entered directly into the timestream, Naruto felt pain beyond anything he had ever experienced before. And Naruto was no stranger to pain. But this was agony beyond what could be felt by simple nerves in a human body. And the pain felt unending. Later, Naruto would never be sure exactly how long it lasted. It might have been a minute, or it might have been millennia, but at the time it certainly felt eternal.

But as the pain finally and with abruptly ended, a feeling of perhaps to be expected disorientation came over him as his now open eyes were filled with the lingering flash of bright green light.

**A/N**: There will be some more passing comments that will fill in bits and pieces of information about Naruto's life (which even at an early age did not exactly follow Cannon!Naruto's, though it was reasonably close). There may even be a small flashback or two, but we will pretty much be focused on Harry's world from now on.

But please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	2. Parallel Childhoods

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thanks for all the great reviews and feedback. From this point on, I will be referring to Naruto/Harry as Harry Potter unless specifically referencing Naruto's life pre-soul merge.

**Chapter 2: Parallel Childhoods**

It was odd being in a new body, he decided. The fact that the body in question was that of a toddler probably didn't help. But he didn't really have time to worry about it at the moment, as several things happened very quickly in the first few seconds after his arrival.

Of course the first thing he had to deal with was the extremely strange feeling of two souls merging. For an instant, he could actually feel the sensation from two perspectives as information began to bleed over between the two souls before they had truly merged. This only lasted for the tiniest fraction of a second before what was once two souls became one. Of course, he had to deal with the disorientation of suddenly having two sets of experiences to work through. It wasn't actually as if he suddenly absorbed all the memories of the child. He had actually experienced that a few times when he had used the Rinnegan's ability to absorb the memories of a ripped out soul.

No, this was different. In this case, rather than absorbing a set of memories, he simply suddenly had two sets of experiences. Two sets of simultaneous knowledge and feelings that ran into each other about a second ago and continued as one from that point on. Given that one of these sets was 190 years of clear memories and the other was the vague and short memories and feelings of a 15-month old, Naruto's long years were dominant as would be expected. But it was still quite a strange sensation to not just be aware of what happened so far in Harry's life, but to remember experiencing it. To feel the love both from and towards his parents as he remembered them holding him. Too bad that even the rudimentary understanding of what was going on and the language spoken his younger self had seemed to indicate that said parents had likely died moments before. It was truly tragic to have both your parents killed in front of you when you were still a young child. Twice.

But he had little time to even begin to feel grief as the surprising lack of pain from the soul merging gave way to an extreme amount of pain as all of the things he had linked to his soul applied themselves to his new body. In that moment, the bloodlines which had been attached to his older soul before his previous death, and more importantly, the seal containing the Juubi applied themselves to his body. As he had expected, this was excruciatingly painful. This was not particularly surprising, given that his genetic code was simultaneously being re-written while the chakra of the greatest of the bijuu, and Naruto's own spiritual energy began to flow through his undeveloped chakra coils. Fortunately, a child of under about two years old still had very flexible chakra coils and they were able to stretch and widen as a sudden massive flow of chakra began to run through his coils. But even this would not have been enough had it not been for the simultaneous application of some of the other advantages Naruto had brought with him.

Between the Uzumaki chakra augmentations, his bijuu enhanced regeneration and the benefits of being able to guide his own chakra with the power of the Rinnegan, he managed to survive the experience, but it was still incredibly painful. In fact, it probably would have been enough to knock him unconscious were it not for the much greater torment Naruto's soul had experienced traveling through the timestream moments before.

And it was a very good thing that he was still conscious, because a few seconds after his arrival, he felt a sudden intrusion. For a moment, he thought it was an attempt to mindwalk him, but the mental barriers Ino had taught him were still standing strong. Then he realized that someone was attempting a soul possession on him. It was an interesting coincidence, because he had spent a significant portion of the last decade of his life studying the soul manipulation techniques that Orochimaru had originally pioneered. In fact, he had been forced to move beyond what Orochimaru had been capable of, at least in some areas, in order to achieve the final technique that had brought him to this point.

So he knew exactly how to counter an attempt at a soul possession. All it took was a focused flare of chakra while using the Rinnegan and its absolute control over yin chakra. And with that Harry forced the soul attempting to possess him out of his body away. However, now that he could actually sit up and look at it, forcing himself to ignore the cooling body of his mother for the moment, he found that the soul possession attempt was very different from any that he had read about before.

First, there was no way that little sliver was possibly actually a whole soul, but he couldn't figure out a reason why someone would mutilate a soul, much less how they could survive it. Second, upon him forcing the piece of soul out, it should have been forced to either return to its original body, or move on should the original body be dead, which seemed likely, given the smoking pile of charred robes. And third, there seemed to be some energy maintaining the soul, and pushing it to try and find some sort of host. Most interesting of all was the fact that whatever this energy was, it wasn't chakra. In fact, as far as the Sharingan could tell, it was entirely made up of spiritual energy, which he previously thought couldn't be used without molding it together with physical energy to make chakra.

Apparently he had been wrong. And while this energy was significantly less potent than chakra, it seemed it could so some delicate tasks that chakra likely could not even with the best chakra control. Or at least he couldn't think of any way that chakra could maintain a soul outside of a body for any significant amount of time. But on the plus side, that made tearing away the energy maintaining the piece of soul so it could move on fairly simple through the pure brute force of chakra. And so he went ahead and did exactly that and allowed that piece of soul, at least to move on, though he had no idea what having only part of you going to the afterlife would do.

This would have to be something he contemplated later. For now, he extended his senses to make sure there was at least no immediate threat, though he did note a great deal of this spiritual energy in the area, some of it even still active. None of it seemed directed at him or malevolent though, so he went ahead and carefully lifted himself out of his crib with wind and gravity chakra and floated over to his mother.

As he leaned against her still chest and began to cry, he realized that this was both a blessing and a curse. It was wonderful, in a way, to have actual memories of parents who loved and cared for him. It was something he had never experienced in Naruto's life, even though he knew from later stories that they had loved him even before he was born. But here he had actual memories of them caring for him and protecting him. Hours spent playing with him, or just holding him. Pouring out the parental love a part of him had always craved. Everything that he had tried to give his own children, but never experienced for himself. But it was taken from him so quickly, leaving only grief over the loss of his parents and over the loss of the chance to grow up with them, lost forever because his soul had merged only minutes too late to save them.

* * *

><p>Harry was still there and still crying when his Uncle Padfoot arrived a few minutes later. Looking back at his memories, he was pretty sure his uncle's name was actually Sirius, though he seemed to laugh a lot about that name, so maybe that was a nickname. Regardless, he hurried over to Harry and his mother with tears streaming down his face, though he seemed extremely relived that Harry at least was alive.<p>

Padfoot first examined him for injury and finding none besides the small scar on his forehead with a tiny amount of blood from before Harry's regeneration had kicked in to seal the wound shut. After this was done, he carefully picked Harry up and with a last hesitant glance back at Lily, and a considerably longer one which came with a choked sob at James' body downstairs, they left the house.

Once they got outside, they were met by another man. A very, very large man. It was a little difficult to figure out exact sizes when he was so small and his perspective was from his uncle's arms, but just comparing him to his uncle, this man had to be nearly ten feet tall and nearly half that wide. But clearly his uncle knew this man, and didn't consider him a threat.

After a brief conversation, most of which Harry didn't understand with his limited comprehension of the language, Padfoot's grief began to transition into anger.

He then handed Harry over to the large man before disappearing with a crack. Once again, this was accomplished through the use of spiritual energy alone. A fairly subtle one at that, as it appeared to create a space-time wormhole through which the user could travel. It would certainly require a lot less energy than the Kamui or the Hiraishin, but he doubted it was as effective.

But before he could really consider this further, the large man gave a few sniffles, or Harry supposed they could be called that, though they didn't really sound like any sniffle he had heard from a human before. The large man then carried Harry over to what ended up being a flying transportation device which was again powered by spiritual energy.

During the fairly long flight, Harry began to attempt to work his way through his feelings about the night. Although he hadn't expected this life to be any easier than his last one, he really hadn't thought that he would experience such trauma immediately upon arrival. But at least he had a lot of good memories of his parents to focus on, for now at least. And it appeared he had a lot of people who already cared about him. His Uncles Padfoot, Wormtail, Moony, his Aunt Alice, and even apparently this big guy, who seemed to be talking to him softly throughout most of the trip, in spite of the fact that the wind was too loud to hear him at all. But luckily the Sharingan could both give the ability to read lips, as well as a perfect memory of their movements for when Harry learned the language well enough to reconstruct his words. Regardless, being around others who cared for him should help him work his way through even so abrupt a loss.

Or so he thought, until they landed and he was placed on a doorstep in a basket in front of some random house with a note. Where they just going to leave him here?

* * *

><p>If Harry had discovered one thing during the four years since the soul merge, it was that the similarities between Naruto and Harry's situations were uncanny. At first, he had thought that he was looking for similarities that didn't exist. He had a tendency to do that.<p>

But in this case, he was pretty sure he wasn't seeing things that were not there. Both were orphaned young because their parents fought against an evil which was attempting to destroy their society. In fact, both children had apparently been specifically targeted by said evil, and both mothers had leaped between the children and death. Both were hated in their childhood by those around them for a power which they did not choose to have. Both were referred to exclusively by a slur-it didn't really matter if it was "the demon," or "the freak," either way, people refused to refer to him by his name. Even their physical appearance had its similarities. Both had a facial disfigurement which apparently even the Bijuu's regeneration couldn't fix, both had untamable hair, and both had unnaturally bright eyes, if of different colors.

But perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him. It seemed that destiny liked to play the same stories over and over again. He had noticed it back in Konoha too. Ninja teams kept repeating history with pairings of detached genius, fangirl of said genius, and deadlast joker who at least thought they were in love with the fangirl. His own team had just followed in the footsteps of Kakashi's team, and even the Sannin in many ways.

Even technological development seemed oddly familiar. Of course it wasn't the same. Every indication was that the society of the Elemental Nations had been entirely lost and humanity had started over again at some point lost in the distant past. Modern technology was much more common and had followed down many paths to do things impossible in the Elemental Nations. But what were the chances of both societies developing virtually identical televisions or microwaves. On the other hand, modern society had also developed instant ramen, so perhaps destiny could be forgiven its trespasses.

But he should really focus more on the present rather than odd philosophical ponderings. The present being his uncle's fist heading towards his face. But it wasn't like he didn't have time for his random musings. His uncle's attack was almost painfully slow, not to mention telegraphed. He really should decide what to do with his uncle this time though.

His past two warnings hadn't worked, apparently. The first time Vernon had tried to hit Harry for backtalk six months ago, Vernon had 'accidentally' tripped and shattered his jaw on the table in mid lunge for the freak. A few months later, after physical therapy, Vernon had tried to hit him again, apparently for being sloppy with his chores, and an overhanging tree branch had 'happened' to break and fall on him, breaking his collarbone, arm, and giving him a concussion.

It was quite odd though. The Dursleys appeared to both simultaneously blame him for these events and everything else that went wrong in their lives, while at the same time believing that he wouldn't do it again if they kept up their behavior. Granted, a lot of the things that went wrong in their lives _were_ his fault, but they deserved to be pranked for their attempted treatment of him. The only time he did anything harmful was when they tried to actually hurt him.

A lot of those had been pretty entertaining too, at least from his perspective. He hadn't done anything the first year because he was focusing on getting used to the changes in his chakra that came with the soul merge to allow him to use the full powers of his eyes and other abilities once again. Besides, at that point, all the Dursleys did was ignore him and underfeed him. The first was pretty annoying, but could be ignored in turn, and the second could be solved by stealing food from both the Dursleys and grocery stores.

But after that, the verbal abuse got worse, they started piling on excessive chores, increased the efforts at mild starvation, and more frequent attempts to lock him up in the cupboard for long periods of time (not that he didn't leave whenever he felt like it, but they didn't know that). He didn't mind the chores, as shadow clones under an invisibility genjutsu made even the impossible amount of chores demanded of him something easy to ignore. That in itself seemed to drive them a little crazy, as the chores were always completed, but they almost never saw him doing them. Which made them certain he was using his unnaturalness to do them, but he just ignored them when they yelled about it.

The starvation attempts were also easily ignored, as food was easily obtained. The verbal abuse was kind of annoying though. He liked to think of himself as a lot more secure in who he was than he had been during his first childhood, so he didn't really let it get to him, but it did get really old when they constantly yelled at him for his unnaturalness and never even called him by his name, just "Freak," or "Boy." So they made excellent prank targets for the next few years. Of course they were not the only people pranked. There were plenty of other good targets around, especially now that he was going to school. He just had to keep those pranks toned down to this side of possible.

But for the Dursleys, he especially enjoyed pranks that were blatantly impossible, but yet small enough that no one outside of the normality obsessed Dursleys really noticed the impossibility. Things like repainting the entire house to a professional standard in bright orange over night. He had done that one seven or eight times now...they kept having it repainted back. Moving the garden and other plants around overnight, but making it look like it had always been like that with Mokuton techniques. Replacing the car with an entirely different model every day for a month. Teleporting Vernon and his car to work immediately after he climbed in from the driveway. Invisibly tying shoelaces together in the middle of company meetings.

With pranks like that, he got to enjoy it twice. Once of them reacting to the prank itself, and a second time as they realized the degree to which they were affected by unnaturalness. But in spite of no one else suspecting the supernatural, pretty much everyone referred to them as "that weird Dursley family" now. _Except_ for Harry, who dressed nicely despite the Dursley's best efforts, was quite fit for his age, and was always very polite and apologetic for his strange relatives. The fact that everyone pretty openly thought that Harry was the normal one and the rest of the Dursleys were weird and possibly insane was probably the best prank of all. And of course every time the Dursleys tried to contact a realtor about moving, they ended up calling a sex-line or driving to a strip-club instead. It turned out that despite how little he had relied on it in his earlier life, genjutsu was a lot of fun.

Of course he didn't restrict his pranks to _just_ the advanced use of chakra techniques he had developed in his later life as Naruto. There was also plenty of inspiration to be drawn from his academy days before he could really use chakra at all. The only downside was that it was far too easy to get away with. Even when he didn't use chakra for assistance, he was used to pranks against highly aware and paranoid ninja. There was no real challenge against civilians. Which just motivated him to try for more and more elaborate pranks.

He did sometimes wonder if he was sometimes going too far and might actually drive them insane though. He didn't want to actually harm them, and he tried to keep his pranks from getting too malicious. He just hoped he could get them to just accept that weird things happened and were a part of life. Maybe learn to laugh at themselves a little. It didn't seem to be working that well so far, as evidenced by the fist which had still yet to reach his face. Though the secondary goal of providing laughs that lasted for hours was going quite well.

With a quick side-step to avoid the blow, Harry met Vernon's eyes to use a genjutsu on him, making him suddenly freeze and scream, "Another tree branch. You broke my arm you little freak."

Harry shook his head with a sigh. Even with the at this point somewhat reasonable belief that Harry could call down objects to break his bones at will, Vernon still had to be insulting and call him freak instead of his name. In a very concerned voice, he said, "Oh, that doesn't look good. You should go to the hospital uncle."

With a glare that might have been at least a little intimidating to someone else at least if it were not for the tears streaming down his face, Vernon turned away and ran back into the house. As he yelled for help from Petunia and entered through the door, he cast one last look back at Harry that was a strange mix of rage and fear.

"Hmm...Am I going too far? I don't really like actually terrifying them and hurting them, but I can't just let them hit me..." Harry gave a sharp shake of his head and continued muttering to himself, "No, they bring this upon themselves. I don't have to like it, but some people only respond to such tactics. Oh well. I really need to get back to training. Changing the entire interior floor plan of the house and moving all the contents around to match the new locations of the rooms took most of the morning while they were out. I need to get back to work."

With a quick smile and shrug, he created a clone to invisibly follow along after the Dursleys and drop the genjutsu after Vernon had spent a few minutes arguing with a doctor that his arm _was_ broken and demanding treatment. Those memories would be entertaining. And maybe a mix of pain and humiliation were what was needed to avoid further abuse attempts?

As his red eyes began to spin behind his own concealing genjutsu, the world shifted and Harry found himself several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere in his training base, which he had created from scratch two years ago with a combination of powerful earth techniques and the always useful Creation of All Things technique. And in that two years, he had been almost entirely focused on getting back into the perfect physical shape he had enjoyed in his prime. Even with his gravity and resistance seals, it would be at least another decade before he was done, but it was his priority for now.

After reviewing the comments his Sharingan had memorized from the large man who had brought him here four years ago, whose name was apparently Hagrid, Harry would be going to a school called Hogwarts to learn magic when he was eleven. He assumed that was the name for the use of spiritual energy that those people had developed. But it would be a lot easier to learn how from them, so he hadn't put much effort into rediscovering those abilities himself, and instead focused on once again reaching his maximum potential in the abilities he had already mastered long ago.

From what he had seen so far, he was relatively certain that those abilities alone would be enough to allow him to defeat anyone he really needed to, so the use of 'magic' was mostly just a curiosity anyway, if a potentially useful one. After all, without including the molding of physical energy with mental energy through the body to reinforce it during training, there was no way to enhance the human body beyond a fairly low natural limit. So by virtue of pure unmatchable speed alone, he should be able to overwhelm anything magic could throw at him, much less everything else chakra could provide.

So for now, he focused on what he knew and started yet another set of push-ups.

* * *

><p>"Boy! Have you finished your chores yet? What are you doing inside?" Vernon snarled viciously at Harry. "And what are you eating? You had breakfast. Get outside, and don't come back until dinner. And where did you even get that?"<p>

Harry's eyes never left the not yet boiling liquid as he waved Vernon away and continued preparing his eighth bowl of ramen. "It's my eighth birthday. I'm not doing chores today. And since you didn't get me a present, I'm making myself one. So leave me alone ya fat bastard."

Judging by the rapidly darkening colors of Vernon's face, Harry knew he probably shouldn't have said that. But he had been able to use the somewhat limited medical techniques he knew to save Vernon the last time he had a stroke in similar circumstances, so it would probably be fine. And though he was better than he once was, he still tended to not watch his mouth quite as much as he should.

It took a full two minutes for Vernon to finally slow his breathing and force himself down from attacking his nephew. In a voice that was more growl than actual words, he said, "Fine, but you had better be in your cupboard early tonight, and up early to get them done tomorrow."

Harry was already eating by that point, but that was strange enough that it was almost enough to make him stop while he considered what was going on. Had Vernon had a stroke after all? He would have to think about it later. Sometimes he wished he had been able to convince the Yamanaka to teach him how to mindwalk someone. Though after a little further thought, he supposed he might not actually want to see what was in Vernon's head.

For now though, there was more ramen to make. He restricted himself to eating it only once a week since the importance of a decent diet in physical development had finally been beaten into him last time through. In his thirties. But hey, no one is perfect, and it looked like he wouldn't be as short this time around. But when he allowed himself to have it, he was certainly going to enjoy it, and his uncle acting even more strangely than normal wasn't going to stop that.

That night when Vernon came into the cupboard with a knife, Harry considered that maybe he should have spent at least a little time thinking about it.

* * *

><p>The past three years had gone by relatively peacefully. Vernon being committed to the mental ward probably had a lot to do with that. But when Vernon started actually foaming at the mouth and screaming random obscenities after Harry had offered him breakfast the day after his eighth birthday, the authorities really didn't have many options.<p>

Eventually it came out that Vernon claimed he murdered Harry the previous night and buried him in a ditch because Harry was an evil freak who had to die for bringing unnaturalness into his family. The police had been quite concerned until they dug up a stabbed stuffed animal with the word FREAK written on its head. Well, technically they were still quite concerned, but they stopped looking into open missing persons reports.

Harry felt a little bad about the whole situation, but the man _had_ tried to murder him. He pretty much deserved it. Harry had done everything he could to save Vernon from his own stupidity and bigotry, but ultimately all it did was push Vernon into greater anger, and poison those around him with the same hatred. So Harry washed his hands of the situation, and hoped that maybe some professional help might do Vernon some good.

But the Dursley household had really settled down after that. Harry had been given his own room, and was simply avoided by the two remaining Dursleys, while Harry did the same. Though of course there was still the occasional prank. The Dursleys had resigned themselves to it at this point, and Dudley even thought they were kind of funny sometimes, at least when they were not aimed at him.

And every month, a deposit was made into Petunia's bank account. She tried not to think about the fact that the deposits had started immediately after she had noticed a slightly guilty look on Harry's face when she was crying about what she was going to do without Vernon to provide for them. Best not to ask questions, really.

"Harry, you have...umm. Well, you have a letter." Harry was jerked out of one of his periodic reflective moods as Dudley came into the room with the morning's mail, putting Harry's letter on the table before continuing upstairs.

With a shrug, he picked up the offered item, taking a moment to examine the high quality parchment and wax seal before breaking it open and reading over the letter within. As he did so, he did notice Petunia biting on her lip almost hard enough to draw blood, but she left any objections she might have had silent.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL _of_ WITCHCRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,_ _Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

Dear Harry Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagal

Deputy Headmistress

After skimming over the second page which listed the supplies needed, he glanced up at Petunia with a wide smile and said, "I'm going to Hogwarts. Do you know what they mean by 'We await your owl?' And where do you go to get these supplies?"

Petunia paled further, if that was possible, before responding in what she was obviously trying to make a strong tone, but which quivered with anxiety, "What makes you think I know? I mean I _don't_ know. And I'm not paying for...that school."

Harry responded with a shrug. "Well, my mother was a witch, so I thought you would know what she did before she went to Hogwarts. Besides, it's always been clear that you know a lot more about the whole unnaturalness business than you said."

Harry had been wrong in thinking that she could get no paler. And her voice was barely audible. In fact, Harry had to channel chakra to his ears just to make out his aunt's voice clearly. "You knew? How long? You always said you didn't know anything about the...weird things that happened."

Harry gave a shrug and answered, "Doesn't really matter. I know some things. I assume they will tell me more at Hogwarts. All I need to know is how to 'owl' a response and how to get my school supplies. And you don't have to worry about paying for it anyway." He grinned even wider than previously. "I'll work something out."

Petunia looked down at the table for a long moment before finally responding in a slightly stronger voice, though her gaze never left the plate in front of her, "Those people use those foul birds to send letters. They just tie a letter onto the thing and tell it who to go to, and it goes. But I don't know where you get your supplies. Someone from that school came and took Lily." The last sentence was delivered in little more than a snarl.

Harry nodded thoughtfully before writing out a quick response saying he would like to attend and to please send someone to take him to get his school supplies. Once the note was complete, he went outside and found the owl sitting on the front porch. Even Harry at this point was a little hesitant as he held out the note and spoke to an owl. "This needs to go to Hogwarts." However, the owl just hopped closer and offered one of its legs. With a shrug, Harry securely tied the note on and watched as the owl flew away, a little unsure of what to do now. But he supposed he would just have to wait and see what happened.

**A/N**: This really wasn't one of my favorite chapters. Too much forcing information as quickly as possible, I guess. Torturing the Dursleys was fun, but beyond that, a lot of it was pretty boring, especially since there was so little direct character interaction...But, it was information that needed to be included. Like the infamous 'training chapters' in Naruto fanfictions, it's a transition chapter to get to the more interesting stuff, which should be coming in the next few chapters. Hopefully.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	3. Dealing with Goblins

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: So...Really sorry about the massive delay. Some real life stuff came up which distracted me from writing for a while, then just when I was getting back into it, my hard-drive died. That meant all my chapter outlines and pieces of future chapters already written were lost (something like 50k words all told). At the time it was fairly depressing and I didn't feel like re-writing it all, so I took a break from writing in general. But recently I have started writing again, both another Naruto story 'If the Villagers Were Right', which I have been posting recently, as well as re-creating my future plans for this story.

I do appreciate everyone's reviews and support though. Part of what made me decide to get back into writing was a sudden spurt of a couple dozen very encouraging reviews in the past couple months. Clearly there is still interest in this story, even after such a long absence. While I can't guarantee perfectly consistent updates in the future, there shouldn't be gaps nearly that long again.

**Chapter 3: Dealing with Goblins**

It was not a long wait. In fact, a reply from Hogwarts arrived the very next morning explaining that a representative of the school would arrive in a week's time to escort him to a place called Diagon Alley to purchase his school supplies. That following week was slightly nerve wracking though. His aunt just avoided him, and Dudley alternated between staring at him with wide eyes and running from him every time he saw him after Petunia had explained that Harry was a wizard and would be going to a magic school in about a month's time.

But Harry had long been used to both fear and avoidance from his relatives, so he didn't let it bother him. Instead, he was just excited about finally getting to something interesting. Based on the seals he had used to send Naruto's soul to this time, apparently he had a great destiny and was ready to get started on fulfilling it. Playing with his relatives with pranks and constant training might keep him occupied, but he wanted to get involved in something a little more exciting as soon as possible.

So Harry was awake and ready to go on the morning of July 31st, and was the only person at the table who did not jump in shock at the sudden very loud banging on the door. He simply got up and moved to answer it. He did, however, jump slightly when the third 'knock' broke the door right off of its hinges, causing it to collapse in front of a suddenly sheepish looking giant of a man.

"Oh, errr...don't you worry 'bout that. Fix that up quick, I will." The man, who was the same one who had carried Harry away from his parent's house and to the Dursley's almost a decade ago, carefully hunched over to enter through the broken doorway and gently lifted the door off the ground and propped it up in the place it had once been. Only then did he look around at the three staring people. Harry was only a few steps away, while Petunia and Dudley were both hiding around corners barely showing enough of themselves to peek at the new arrival.

Harry was still a little hesitant, not sure how you were supposed to talk to the guy who just casually knocked down the front door on the way to escort him to buy school supplies. But finally, after a short awkward pause, he eventually said, "Hi. Umm...You must be the representative of Hogwarts to take me to Diagon Alley?"

"Yeah, that's me. I'm Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys an' Grounds at Hogwarts. Jus' call me Hagrid though. Everyone does." Without pausing, he continued to ramble on, clapping Harry on the shoulder, though he didn't notice either the reflexive tensing when he approached Harry, or that Harry didn't stumble with the blow like other eleven year olds would. "Yeh must be Harry. Haven't seen yeh since you was a baby. Yeh look just like yer dad, but with yer mum's eyes. An' I see yeh don't need glasses like yer dad did."

Harry nodded and smiled. "Thanks Hagrid. Yeah, I'm Harry. You knew my parents then? Maybe you can tell me some stories about them when they were in school some time? My aunt has told me a little about my mum, but...well, they were not really very close after they were kids."

Hagrid grinned and wiped at his watery eyes as he responded emotionally. "O' course, Harry. Yer mum an' dad were great. Knew 'em when they were at Hogwarts. Be glad to tell you all 'bout them."

Harry grinned in response. "Thanks Hagrid. So, are you ready to take us?"

Hagrid nodded enthusiastically, apparently grateful for the change of topic to a less emotional one. "O' course, Harry. Oh, but I almost forgot." He reached into one of the massive pockets that covered much of his overcoat and eventually drew out a cake in a box with _Happy Birthday Harry_ written in green icing. "Think I mighta sat on it at some point though. Might be a bit squished, but it should taste all right. Happy birthday Harry."

Harry was surprised at this. He hadn't had a birthday cake since his first birthday before his parents died, and even if it was a little squished and honestly didn't look like the tastiest cake he had ever seen even discounting its smashed state, it was still a very nice gesture. "Thanks Hagrid. That's really nice of you." He glanced over his shoulder at Petunia and Dudley as he said, "We can just leave it here for now and eat it when I come back tonight. But _don't_ eat any before then." He then looked back at Hagrid and asked, "Maybe you can stop in and share it with us when we get back from the shopping trip?"

Most people might have questioned it as strange that an eleven year old was basically making demands of his aunt, and even more surprised at the rapid nodding she gave in response. Hagrid was certainly not most people and didn't notice any of this. Instead he just handed the box to Harry and watched as Harry handed it over to his aunt, touched at Harry's desire to include him in his birthday celebration even though they had just met.

"O' course, Harry. Would be honored. Best be off though. Lot to do today."

Harry was excited as well. He had been looking forward to seeing some more magic and trying to figure out exactly how it was done for years now. "So how are we going to get to this Diagon Alley? Are we going to teleport, or fly or something?"

"Err…No. Going to take the bus, I suppose."

A very incredulous and disappointed Harry slowly replied, "The...bus?"

* * *

><p>It turned out that 'the bus' was certainly not like the non-magical variety - Muggles, he was told they were called in the magical world. But though it was a lot faster and able to ignore all traffic, which was definitely a plus, it was also a very uncomfortable ride. Harry might be able to keep his balance easily because of his extensive training, but it was still annoying being constantly thrown around as the bus rapidly changed directions. Teleportation seemed much easier, and he didn't really understand why they hadn't gone that way. Maybe only some people could?<p>

But eventually they had reached a dirty little pub called The Leaky Cauldron, which was apparently their destination. Harry had to give Hagrid an odd look, as if asking if this was really where they were supposed to go, but once again Hagrid proved to not be the most observant fellow. Eventually Harry just shrugged and continued to follow him into the dimly lit building that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since before Harry was born.

Once inside, the bartender, an old toothless bald man with matched the shoddy décor perfectly nodded in recognition of Hagrid and asked, "The usual, Hagrid?"

Hagrid once again clapped Harry on the shoulder, and once again didn't notice that Harry wasn't knocked away by the blow, though Harry was at least able to keep his reflexive tensing under control this time. "Can't, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business."

The old man, Tom, apparently, looked closely at Harry before gasping in shock as replied, "Good Lord, is this - can this be...Bless my soul, Harry Potter...what an honor." At this, the whole bar fell silent and the old bartender rushed around and seized his hand, shaking it vigorously. Was he actually crying? Harry peered more closely at him to confirm this before looking around uncomfortably at all the staring people who likewise rose to rush towards him at this point, each eager to shake his hand or pat him on the back. Or just to be able to be in his presence, evidently.

Harry had faced this sort of adoration before in his previous life. There had actually been a fairly sizable religion centered around him being an actual god in the later part of his life in the Elemental Nations, regardless of what he tried to do to stop it. So this sort of mindless adulation was very recognizable to him. It was totally unexpected though. Harry had mistakenly created an entire picture of how he thought his life would likely go, often using parallels to his prior life based on the numerous similarities he had experienced so far, so this was quite a surprise.

He had fully expected to come into the Wizarding World disliked and looked down upon just as he had as a child and teenager as Naruto, and just as he had spent his childhood as Harry as well. Apparently that would certainly not be the case this time. He might have been hated by his relatives, or at best a mix of tolerated and feared lately, but it seemed that he was already loved in the Wizarding World.

Did this mean he would have, and he hesitated to even think it, but it must be done...fangirls? He almost gagged at the thought, but was barely able to maintain a smiling face for the benefit of all the people eager to meet him after being in the muggle world for almost a decade. He had been able to mostly avoid fangirls focused on him in his last life. Afterall, he had already been engaged by the time he had fully turned his reputation around from hated to universally respected, much less this sort of adoration. But it looked like he might have to bear fangirls this time. He was pretty sure that had been what had ultimately tipped the balance and driven Sasuke to evil though, so he would have to be careful.

Eventually Hagrid did usher Harry away from the crowds and through a magical portal through a brick wall into Diagon Alley itself, which he was thankful for. He might be somewhat used to crowds like that from his other life, but after he had gotten used to the feeling of being acknowledged by so many people, he hadn't really enjoyed it that much. Besides, at least those crowds had loved him for something he actually did, rather than whatever these people loved him for. "So, Hagrid. What was all of that about?"

Hagrid paused in his steps and looked down at Harry with confusion. "What do yah mean, Harry?"

"All of the hand-shaking and enthusiastic greetings. The congratulations and well-wishing. That can't be the normal greeting to people entering into the Wizarding World for the first time."

Hagrid looked shocked at this, but eventually he answered, "Well, yer famous Harry. I thought yeh knew. For, yeh know...for killing You-Know-Who."

"Oh, you mean Voldemort?" Hagrid flinched at this and quickly waved for Harry to be quiet.

He then whispered quietly, or at least quietly for Hagrid, so at a low rumble that couldn't be easily heard from more than a couple dozen feet away, "Yeh shouldn't say his name Harry."

"I shouldn't say his name? Why not? You actually want me to call him 'You-Know-Who'? What if someone doesn't know who?"

Hagrid clears his throat and looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, which they amazingly weren't, given the earlier attention he had received. "People jus' don' like it Harry. You-Know-Who scared a lot of people when he was around. Scares 'em still, I guess. They was dark days, with people disappearing, and anyone who tried to oppose him endin' up dead. Well, 'cept for Dumbledore, o' course. People don' even like thinkin' 'bout those days, an' You-Know-Who was the cause of it all."

Harry continued to give an incredulous look throughout the entire explanation. "People were so scared of him they were afraid to say his name? And still are a decade later? That's kind of insane. It's not like saying Voldemort's name will make him come back to life to kill you or something."

Hagrid once again flinched at Voldemort's name and shrugged uncomfortably. "Jus' the way it is Harry. But when yeh got rid o' him. Survived a curse that's never been survived before, and the whole country celebrated. That's why yeh are so famous. People call yeh the Boy-Who-Lived."

Harry frowned, but nodded, "Oh. I always kind of assumed that was because of something my mother did before she was killed. I was only fifteen months old, so I don't think there was really anything I could have done to stop Voldemort. I think my mother should be the famous one, not me."

"I never really thought of it like that." Hagrid stood in deep thought, or deep thought for Hagrid, for a few moments, then shrugged. "Well, I don' know. Dumbledore said it was yeh that stopped...him, an' that's good enough fer me, and fer most everybody else too."

Harry rolled his eyes, but didn't respond to this. "How did they even know I was Harry Potter though? It's not like I was wearing a sign."

"Oh. Well, that would be because of yer scar, Harry. The most famous scar in the world, where You-Know-Who hit yeh with his killing curse."

Harry blinked in surprise at that. His hair cut was clipped fairly short, to make sure it wouldn't get in his eyes, or be a convenient handhold, should that come up. Besides, he had learned long ago to accept that if his hair was going to stand up no matter how long he made it, he might as well wear it short so it was easy to take care of. Of course this made the scar very obvious to anyone looking. But that was easily solved.

Harry put his hand over the scar as if he was rubbing it, while what he was really doing was placing a seal over the thing which would conceal it from notice for anyone who didn't already know it was there. By the time he removed his hand several seconds later, the seal had faded from the view. And while Hagrid would still be able to see the scar, knowing it should be there, anyone who didn't know he was Harry Potter just wouldn't notice the thing.

"Well, I guess it's time to start shopping? Where should we go first?"

Hagrid brightened, clearly glad to be off of the subject of Voldemort. "Well, first, we need tah go to Gringotts Bank to get some of the money yer parents left from the Goblins."

Harry was surprised by the mention of goblins, but didn't let it phase him. "Oh, well I brought money. I think I should have enough to cover it."

"Oh, well yeh can't use muggle money in Diagon Alley. Yeh need Wizarding money - Galleons, Sickles, an' knuts. But don' yeh worry. Yer mum an' dad left yah plenty."

By this time they were approaching a large white building with columns in the front and bronze doors. Once they entered, they came to a second silver set of doors with a warning against thievery in the form of a poem engraved on them, which Harry pretty much ignored. However, he was quite interested in the short humanoids with rather inhuman features and very long fingers and feet, dressed in a uniform of red and gold.

Hagrid nodded at him as they passed and the strange thing bowed to them both as it opened the door. Hagrid nodded at the creatures and stated, "Err...thats a goblin. They run the bank."

They must have been a bloodline that separated from humanity a while back, though he had no idea why anyone would pursue a bloodline like that. He couldn't see any possible advantages. It was obvious what the bloodline Hagrid was descended from gave - great strength and probably durability, though it didn't seem quite worth it to Harry, given the negatives of such inconspicuous size and, if Hagrid was any indication, probably reduced intelligence. In the case of these 'goblins' though, it was likely that some advantages did exist, and were simply not physically obvious. Otherwise the bloodline wouldn't have lasted, and certainly wouldn't have grown into what was considered an entire species of people.

It was something to think about and if necessary, do some research on, at a later time. For now, they approached a long counter with a row of goblins sitting on high stools writing in ledgers and weighing coins while they dealt with the lines of wizards. Moving to one of the open goblins, Hagrid greeted him and said, "Mornin', We've come to take some money outta Harry Potter's trust vault."

The goblin briefly glanced up at Hagrid before giving an even briefer look at Harry. "You have his key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere." At this point Hagrid started emptying many of his numerous pockets out onto the counter looking for the key, apparently. Harry actually ended up being slightly impressed by just how much junk the large man was carrying around with him. The goblin looked decidedly less impressed as old pieces of biscuits and many other objects that had no business being in a man's pockets were dumped onto his formerly pristine counter.

"Ah, here it is." He held up a small golden key, which the goblin examined and stated his approval of. Hagrid then continued speaking, "An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore. It's about You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen."

After quickly taking the letter from Hagrid and examining it, the goblin nodded. "Very well, I will have someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!"

But Harry quickly interrupted at this point. "Actually, can we go down separately? If Hagrid's business is private, I probably shouldn't be involved, and I would like time to examine my own vault." Without asking, he took the key to his vault which the goblin had set on the counter while he read Hagrid's letter. This received a frown from both the goblin and Hagrid, though Hagrid seemed more confused about what to do. Harry honestly didn't care though. He got the impression that Hagrid had planned on getting that key back, and this was the best way to make sure he kept it. It was _his_ vault, afterall. Not that he really cared about money, since he could make it more or less at will, but he didn't want _other_ people accessing his money without his permission. It was just a bad habit to allow people to get into.

"Err...Harry, Dumbledore told me ta look after yeh today. I think it'd be best..." He trailed off as Harry waved the comment away.

"Oh, I'm sure I will be fine. Nothing is going to happen in a trip to a vault, and it would be faster if we did both at the same time rather than me having to hang around while you went to Dumbledore's vault, and you hang around while I go to mine." Hagrid hesitantly nodded. He clearly wasn't totally comfortable going against what Dumbledore had apparently told him, but Harry was relying on the fact that Dumbledore had apparently also impressed the importance of whatever he was getting.

Having seen an agreement between the two, the goblin at the counter called out for another goblin called Jawripper to take Hagrid to vault 713, while Griphook escorted Harry, who waved at Hagrid and told him they could meet up in the lobby shortly.

As he separated from Hagrid, Harry decided to strike up a conversation and learn more about goblins in general. "So, how did Goblins become bankers, exactly? The stories about goblins in the muggle world always portray you more as warriors. I was pretty shocked to find you ran a bank instead."

Griphook frowned heavily up at him, but finally did respond as he led him out of the lobby. "Goblins are warriors. But after the last war with wizards, we agreed to be the bankers for the Wizarding world, rather than continue to fight."

Harry blinked in shock at this revelation. "Wait, so wizards had just finished having a war with goblins, and right after it was over, it was decided to turn over all our money? You must have kicked our asses." He laughed at this point, until he trailed off when he found Griphook was definitely not laughing.

With a sneer, Griphook waited until Harry stopped laughing, then answered, "Actually, wizards were winning the war, but being cowards, could not stand the losses they were taking in the winning, so they came to an agreement with us. All we ever wanted was your gold, so your Ministry of Magic decided to turn it over to us, if only to _manage_."

"And...they agreed to that? Turning over all our money to a recently hostile group that apparently openly admitted that they just wanted our gold? That seems insane."

"Well, yes, we often find that wizards are insane."

"But how did we know you wouldn't just close the doors on the bank, and laugh at us that we had willingly given you all our gold?"

At this Griphook's sneer turned angry and became more of a snarl as he looked at Harry. "Are you accusing us of theft? That is a very serious claim."

Harry cleared his throat at the tense atmosphere, though he couldn't bring himself to actually be concerned. "I wasn't accusing you of anything. I was just saying it seemed like a foolish thing to do on our part, since you could have, and still could, I suppose, take advantage of our trust pretty easily, if what you want is our gold anyway. Besides, how did you get individual humans to deposit money into your vaults anyway? Right after a war, even if the government said you could open a bank, I would think wizards would continue to bank however they had before, rather than rush to bring their money to you."

Griphook was still pretty displeased, but apparently somewhat mollified. "Our agreement with your government made it illegal for any other than goblins to operate a bank dealing in Wizarding currency."

Harry was once more forced to stop in shock before he caught himself. "They gave you a legal monopoly? Your interest rates must suck. If there isn't any alternative, why give good rates..."

Griphook was back to sneering again. "Interest received for deposits is a muggle idea. In the Wizarding World, you pay us to rent a vault and guard your gold. If you wish to take a loan, we use our own gold for that."

"What? That's ridiculous. I can keep my own money safe, thank you very much...Can I go ahead and pull all my money out of Gringotts now?"

Of course Griphook was back to snarling again at this. "Until your majority, you may not remove money from your family vault, only your trust vault. And even if you empty your trust vault, you cannot close it until you reach your majority anyway, and fees will continue to be charged to your family vault, regardless of the amount in the trust vault."

Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. "Of _course_ they will. I guess you were right before when you thought I was accusing you of theft. An entire race of thieves who just like to do it legally, or as legal as strong arming an entire government through the threat of continued war can be. I guess having us being the only ones who care about the lives of our people was a powerful motivator to take advantage of."

It should perhaps be noted at this point that Harry had a great deal of experience in various negotiations in his previous life. However, those negotiations were almost always centered on one of two things. First, that Naruto was personal friends with almost every leader on the continent, causing negotiations to generally go fairly smoothly. And second, the abject fear that his name gave to those who were not his friends. He rarely actually made any sort of threats, but the knowledge that he could casually destroy your entire city by himself was always just sort of there, so people tended to rush to accommodate what he wanted. All they had to do is remember that there used to be a minor ninja village known as the Village Hidden in the Grass and any fear they might have forgotten came back. It had been such a long time since he had really dealt with groups opposed to him who weren't fully aware of his abilities, he was out of practice, to say the least. That combined with his natural brashness and the total absence of any fear of...well, anything, created an interesting way of talking to those he didn't like.

Harry had continued strolling along the hallway they were walking down quite casually, approaching one of what looked like a sort of a small open railroad car, which Griphook had previously been leading him towards. But he quickly stopped when he noticed the goblin had likewise stopped and was staring at him with what started as shock, but looked to be morphing into rage. "What?"

Griphook was quick to respond. "What?! _What_? You dare accuse us of stealing what is rightfully ours by contract? I have dueled for less."

Harry rolled his eyes yet again as he responded, "The fact that you forced someone to make a contract doesn't make it any less stealing. In fact it kind of highlights the stealing. If someone threatened to kill your family if you didn't sign over all your money, would that make it not stealing, just because you signed a contract agreeing to it?"

Griphook was spitting and snarling enough now that his words were somewhat difficult to decipher. "Of course it wouldn't be stealing. But I would never sign such a thing. Contracts are sacred, and if you _wizards_..." Harry could hear the derision drip off of the word as Griphook drew it out before continuing, "decided to sign a contract giving us rights, those are our rights, _not_ theft."

"You would refuse to sign away money even if it meant your family would _die_? That's _disgusting_. And from how you said it, that's just a standard way of seeing things for your culture. Ugg...Well, come on little thief, show me the way to my vault. I haven't _signed it away_, so you have to don't you." Harry sounded, at worst, deeply annoyed with Griphook and goblin culture at this point as he spoke.

Griphook, on the other hand, was lost in his rage. Apparently goblins were used to dealing with wizard's arrogance and looking down on goblins as if they were lesser beings. They were even used to distrust and wizards who believed that goblins were greedy and possibly theives. They were _not_ used to having wizards casually openly insult their integrity and culture to their faces in goblin territory. So when Griphook lunged at Harry with clear murderous intent, Harry probably shouldn't have been surprised. But he was. Well, slightly, anyway.

Not that it mattered in the slightest. Harry might still be far, far below what his physical abilities had once been at their height in his old body and what he hoped to reach again in this one eventually. But that wasn't saying much, since at his most powerful, Harry had been able punch hard enough to crack mountains and move fast enough it took a highly trained eyes just to hope to be able to see the blur of movement. With the lost ability to enhance his training with chakra, he was already considerably beyond anything mere normal muscles could possibly hope to match, and with over a century of practice with taijutsu, it was unlikely he would run across many who could match his skill either.

So Harry didn't even have to move from where he stood as he casually flicked out his left hand to catch Griphook's leading forearm, lifting it above his head as he thrust out his right palm against the goblin's extended elbow to force the joint to bend very much the wrong way with a shark crack. But this was just one of Griphook's worries as he went flying over Harry's head and slammed into the opposite wall, dazing him and breaking his nose and probably some teeth while he was at it.

But pain wasn't enough to break through a goblin in the grip of a berserker fury. In fact, it only encouraged it. However, before Griphook could move, Harry was kneeling on his back and Griphook was suddenly filled with fear. No, more than fear, it was absolute terror. The sure knowledge that he was going to die.

Killing Intent was a technique in which the use of chakra was employed to focus a ninja's pure will and sure knowledge that they could kill someone and inflict that knowledge on another. Against someone with even remotely close to equal chakra reserves who knew how to keep a focused mind, it was relatively easily combated. Against a goblin who didn't even have chakra reserves, just a small pool of spiritual energy and had never even heard of killing intent, it was more than enough to break him out of his frenzy and make him focus very carefully on Harry's quiet and calm words.

"Now, I don't really want to fight you, but I will if I have to. I will kill you if I have to. But you know that now, don't you. You understand how utterly futile it is to fight me." He paused, looking down at the very still goblin, feeling slight pity for the now rather pathetic creature. On the other hand, nothing he had said was untrue, and he refused to tip-toe around a bunch of thieves who got off on terrorizing humans into agreeing to their demands. So after a short pause, he continued, "Nod if you agree." A short but emphatic nod was what he immediately got, so Harry stood up off of Griphook's back. "Good. Besides, if you had killed me, imagine the trouble goblins would be in for killing the Boy-Who-Lived. Now take me to my vault, and hopefully we won't see each other again until I come after my majority to empty out my family vault."

After another short pause in which he let Griphook consider this point, Harry continued, "Now, if you would like, I can heal your injuries for you, and we can continue on down to my vault." But Griphook just glared at him, though his eyes quickly dropped, unable to meet Harry's steady gaze as he turned away and led the boy to one of the carts, cradling his useless arm and ignoring his fairly heavily bleeding face.

The trip through the tunnels in the goblin's cart was done in silence. Harry kept his Sharingan active to memorize the pathway and all of the vaults passed, but kept any opinion to himself. He was tempted to ask if the cart could go any faster, as the trip might have actually been made exciting if so. Griphook clearly wasn't in the mood though, and it probably wasn't the time to be pushing things. Harry liked to think he could demonstrate some restraint _sometimes_, at least.

So eventually they reached a large vault door and Griphook requested Harry's key while clearly struggling to keep his snarl under control. But he did manage it, seeming to remember the fear he had felt so briefly, yet so strongly, only minutes before. So he took the key and slid it into the large door, opening it to reveal literal piles of gold, silver, and bronze. It was enough to make even Harry's eyes widen. Sure, he could have created duplicate stacks of gold easily enough, but this was presumably natural precious materials, and a _lot_ more than Harry had assumed. It was supposed to be a trust vault after all, so Harry had thought it would likely just be enough to comfortably make his way through school, not piles that had to be a decent fortune even for an adult. He was sure he could probably come up with some sort of use for it eventually though.

So Harry entered the vault and almost closed the door behind him to give privacy. He did make sure to send a quick glare towards the goblin before doing so, as he was sure the temptation to slam the door shut and try and leave him there would exist. Harry almost hoped he would. Griphook's expression when he stepped out of the black flames devouring the massive metal door was sure to be hilarious. But he was pretty sure that now that the goblin had his anger under control, he would be aware that having the famous Boy-Who-Lived disappear in goblin tunnels with no explanation would cause massive problems.

So instead, he focused on using Kamui to send all the piles of money into his personal subspace storage dimension. Of all of the four abilities his Mangekyo Sharingan eye granted, that one was definitely his favorite. He supposed every user of that eye had their favorite. By the end, Sasuke had been skilled enough with the flames of Amaterasu he probably could have performed surgery with the black flames. Although he had never faced it personally, from reports Itachi's mastery of the ultimate genjutsu of Tsukuyomi was said to be so great he could control every aspect of reality within the illusion, even massively bending time itself. And Madara had achieved far greater mastery with the ultimate defense of Susanoo than any before or since. Not even he could have quite matched any of them in their specialty, even after decades of practice and near infinite chakra reserves to use in the techniques. But in the fourth technique of Kamui, the ultimate space-time manipulation of the Mangekyo Sharingan, he had been able to surpass even its proclaimed master. Of course it sometimes made him question himself that he had followed in the footsteps of Tobi, of all people, but it was still his favorite and most useful of the Sharingan's techniques.

Effectively what the technique allowed was stepping or sending someone or something out of reality. You could then step back to whatever location you wished, allowing near-instant teleportation to anywhere without even the need for seal markers like the Hiraishin required. Or you could use it as an attack to send an enemy, or part of an enemy into nul-space, as he called it, or even as a defense to send an attack there. You could step into a sub-space dimension to store whatever you wanted there, accessible only by you. Harry had even managed to find a way to link this dimension to his soul so it came with him, allowing him to bring a stockpile of weapons, and other materials he thought he might not have access to in the future. He had even been able to bring a number of barrels of Ichiraku Ramen under stasis seals, just in case he wasn't able to obtain the right ingredients to make it, though thankfully that hadn't ended up being an issue. And finally, it was possible to make a sort of half-step into nul-space, allowing you to observe an area and be seen, but be totally immaterial and immune to attacks, though most attacks were impossible from that state as well.

The incredible versatility of Kamui just made it so useful, even if it was less blatantly powerful than Amaterasu or Susanoo, and he just rarely had the need to spend subjective days torturing someone in a few seconds, so Tsukuyomi rarely even came up.

But with all of his money safely put away, he reopened the vault door and gave a bright smile at the thieving goblin. "Ok, I'm ready to go."

The trip back to the lobby was just as awkwardly silent as the cart-ride down had been, and Harry even noticed Griphook looking over at the guards, and had to wonder if he was thinking about calling them over, but apparently decided it wouldn't be a good idea. Certainly he noticed all the guards looking strangely at the bloody and wounded goblin with torn and rumpled clothes escorting Harry. Even Hagrid noticed that as he walked over and gave one strange look at Griphook before looking back at Harry. "Err...So, everything alright then, Harry?"

But Harry just smiled widely at him and said in an excited voice. "Yeah. It was pretty boring, but it went fine. Now let's go see what's in Diagon Alley."

* * *

><p>Ragnok was in equal measure incredulous and displeased. Neither were generally common emotions for the Goblin King of the British Isles. But he was certainly feeling them today as he glared down at the kneeling Griphook.<p>

"So let me make sure I understand you correctly. You are saying that Potter walked in, and in the short time it took to walk from the lobby to the carts, he called not just you, but goblins in general thieves, and said he was disgusted by our culture. You then attempted to attack this eleven year old child, but _failed_. At which point you meekly took him to his vault, which he emptied. And he stated he plans to empty his family vault upon his majority, a vault which has been in our control for _centuries_. Would that be an accurate summary?"

Griphook pressed his upper body and face harder against the ground from his kneeling position. His still broken nose and arm probably hurt a lot in that position. Ragnok deeply hoped so.

"Well...Yes, Your Majesty. Factually speaking, that is correct." However, he hurried to elaborate, "But he is far more powerful than any eleven year old should be. More powerful than an adult should be! I may not be a renowned warrior such as yourself, but I am well trained, yet he handled me like a newborn puppy. I didn't even see him move, and he threw me across the room with one arm! And the...fear he could project was unbelievable. I couldn't even move. You may think me..." He hesitated at this point, but forced the words out, "You may think that I am a coward, but he was not someone who could be faced by the likes of me. Not and have any chance of survival."

Ragnok idly toyed with the hilt of his sword as he examined the sniveling goblin in front of him. One of the most pathetic specimens he had ever seen, in fact. "Perhaps...But if that was the case, you should have died like an honorable goblin, not lived like...like this. Perhaps then we could have done something to avenge you, taking your body to the Ministry as evidence of Potter's crimes in our caves. But it is good that you failed. The boy wasn't wrong that killing him would have drastic repercussions for us. We are not yet ready for war with the wizards, and that is what might well have come from such an act.

Still...something must be done. The loss of gold when he closes the Potter accounts, and possibly the Black accounts as well is bad enough. Add to that the possible damage of word getting out that the Boy-Who-Lived believes goblins to be untrustworthy thieves, and there may be movement for greater restrictions on us, leading once again to a war we are not ready for. And of course, that doesn't consider the dishonor done to you, your clan, and all goblins."

Griphook waited for a few seconds, but eventually couldn't take the pressure and asked, "What would you have me do to make up for this dishonor?"

Slowly a grin formed on Ragnok's face. A grin filled with sharp teeth and the sure knowledge that death and humiliation would come to his enemies. "I am told you are clever Griphook. Not the most skilled warrior, but cunning, at least. So perhaps it is right that you be the one to make up for your own failure.

First, you shall make sure that you sell the information that Potter has withdrawn around one hundred thousand galleons out of the safety of the bank to the right parties. Given what you described it is unlikely, but it's always possible someone will get lucky and take care of our problem for us. At worst it should cause problems for the boy.

Then it will be up to you to find out where Potter's weak spots lie. Friends, family, reputation, I don't care. Find out what he treasures. Then we will know exactly where to push. And once we know that and can take...appropriate measures against these vulnerabilities, we will force him to come to us. Then he will either be on his knees begging for forgiveness and signing a binding contract with certain _concessions _of his own, or he will die, but in a way that cannot be traced back to us.

Oh, and Griphook. You will take care of any bribes or payments necessary from your own clan's accounts. This is first and foremost _your _honor you seek to regain. It is disgraceful enough that you must come to me for help; you shall at least pay for your own solution." At this point the goblin king leaned forward and growled with even greater intensity. "And know this, Griphook. This is your only opportunity to regain lost honor. You shall find a way to crush Potter, one way or the other, or you will die, and I will find one who can."

**A/N**: And that's chapter 3. Hopefully everyone enjoyed it.

As you see, this will not be a 'friendly little goblins fix Harry's problems because he remembered Griphook's name' story. There is no indication in the cannon that goblins are friendly at all. In fact, every indication is given that goblins as a species are vicious little creatures who would like nothing more than to be rid of all wizards, kind and respectful ones included. And I have always found it an absurd cliché that goblins are just waiting for a wizard to come along and be nice and respectful to them, at which point they will do everything they can to help out that wizard, often including breaking laws.

Instead, goblins are consistently shown as entirely centered around greed. To the point that they are more concerned about getting 'their' property back than helping the destruction of Voldemort, someone who is sure to come for them too eventually. So if they care more about their money and precious artifacts than their own survival, I can't imagine they would care more about helping Harry just because he was nice to them. Granted Harry clearly isn't exactly going to go out of his way to be nice and respectful to goblins in this story either, but that isn't really his way of doing things, especially when he was just making reasonable points.

On that subject, I highly recommend the oneshot story An Unwise Conspiracy by Nia River for my personal favorite portrayal of goblins in all of fanfiction. Its short, to the point, pokes fun at several of the worst fanfiction clichés(the 'goblins are super friendly and helpful if you are nice to them' and 'Harry is the heir to a dozen different houses that for some strange reason no one bothered to claim before' clichés, to be specific), and is quite awesome too.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	4. Compatibility Part 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thank you to everyone who read and especially reviewed. I am amazed by the support I have received for this story. I enjoy writing for its own sake, but so many reviews are motivating as well.

**Chapter 4: Compatibility - Part 1**

Hagrid was still giving him strange looks as they left the bank, but he was either too courteous to ask, or just didn't know how to go about asking what exactly had happened that ended with Harry's goblin escort having a broken arm and nose. And as the man eventually opened his mouth, possibly to ask, Harry quickly interrupted him by asking in an excited voice, "So, where should we go first? Seems like there are all kinds of interesting shops."

"Err...right. Umm...I suppose yeh should be getting yer uniform first. Uhh, do yeh think yeh mind if I headed over ta the Leaky Cauldron fer a bit of a pick-me-up? I hate them Gringotts Carts. Yeh can just head into Madam Malkin's, an' she'll take care of yeh."

Harry still thought the idea of everyone wearing robes was a little strange, but he _had_ spent decades wearing the Hokage's robes. Which he had hated, except for the hat. The hat had still been awesome even after forty years. Still, if he had to wear robes, he could grin and bear it. So he just looked up at the big man, "Oh, yeah. Sure. Take your time. If I finish up at the robes shop, I will head over to the book store and spend some time looking around there. I would like to do that anyway."

Not that he particularly enjoyed reading, but unfortunately, this was one of the times when it was necessary to do a little reading as soon as possible. There was a pretty wide range of things he could do with chakra, and he had no intention of just not using any of that just to avoid being accused of doing the impossible. But it would be very important to know what he could pass off as some weird rare power, and what people believed was just totally impossible. He at _least_ wanted to be ready to memorize people's reactions with the Sharingan when he did casually do those 'impossible' things.

And the tiny part of him that most people would call their sense of caution, and he just called annoying, was telling him he should probably avoid breaking _too_ many magical theories and laws. Still, it was probably a good idea for the time being. If nothing else, it would be easier to get away with pranks using these 'impossible' abilities if it wasn't known he could use them.

So with that thought restoring the smile to his face, he waved towards Hagrid and entered Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.

It turned out that Madam Malkin was a short overweight woman who was wearing all purple robes. It made him question if coming to her for any sort of fashion advice was a good idea, but given what he had seen from other wizards in Diagon Alley so far, maybe something like this was required to fit in. Perhaps he could convince her that orange robes were the way to go. These might be the first people he could find that might actually agree with him that clothes should be made in such an awesome color. But eventually his fantasies were interrupted by the woman in front of him.

"Hogwarts, dear? We have had a lot of you in recently. In fact, we have one being measured right now." She motioned towards the pale boy with blond, almost white, hair. "Well, come this way and we will get you measured and ready quick." Harry just shrugged in response and followed her motioning to a stool next to the other kid.

As he glanced over at the other boy, mostly ignoring the woman who was measuring him, he asked, "So are you going to be a first year at Hogwarts too?"

The boy looked over at Harry for the first time as he responded, "Oh, yes. I'm looking forward to it. It's really not fair that they won't let us take brooms in our first year though. I was going to go look at racing brooms next. I think I will get my father to get me one and smuggle it in somehow."

"Yeah, I saw that they were not allowing us to bring brooms." Harry smiled over at the other boy as he responded. "It seemed a weird restriction. I guess flying around on brooms does seem like it might be a little dangerous, but they let us bring wands. Surely those are more dangerous if used incorrectly. At least you are only risking your own neck on a broom, rather than someone else's."

"Hey, yeah, that's a good point. There are loads of spells to hurt someone more than a fall from a broom, and they let us use those. If we already know how to fly a broom, we should be allowed. Not that a rule is going to stop me from bringing a broom," he stated arrogantly, but with a grin. "So, what position do you play in Quidditch?"

Harry frowned at this. So far in the conversation, he had been keeping up reasonably easily. He had seen the restriction on first years bringing brooms, and between the muggle legends of witches on brooms and this boy's comment about racing brooms, it was pretty easy to figure out that apparently magical people flew around on brooms, as ridiculous as that sounded. But he had never heard of anything called Quidditch, so he asked, "What is Quidditch? Is that a wizard's sport of some kind?"

The blond boy almost gasped, and after a moment a slightly disgusted expression came onto his face as he subtly shifted away from Harry. Or possibly the boy was constipated. "Oh...So you're a mudblood then?"

Harry almost laughed at the kid's expression, but managed to restrain himself. "I don't actually know what a mudblood is, but it sounds like some sort of insult."

The blond sneered and replied, "It's not an insult, it's just a description. You mudbloods don't know anything about magical society or our ancient traditions, trying to imitate _muggles_ all the time. Father says that you are the reason Hogwarts and the rest of the Wizarding World are declining. That they shouldn't allow _your_ kind into Hogwarts, and only allow in the old families."

Harry paused for a few seconds, still surprised by this sudden outburst. "Oh. I see. You are just an idiot. Well, carry on, I guess. Try to limit how much you pollute our air with your stupidity though. We would all appreciate it, I think."

The blond gaped at him, probably shocked at the first time in his life someone had spoken to him like that. Well, if they were going to be in the same classes, it probably wouldn't be the last.

"What? How dare you! Wait until my Father...Ouch!" He cut off as the woman measuring him, who had been glaring unnoticed by the blond since he started his rant pricked him with her needle.

In a too sweet voice, she said, "Oh. So sorry dear. Well, you are finished up. Why don't you head out."

The boy glared at the woman as well before once again putting his nose into the air as he arrogantly stomped out of the store. But just as the door was swinging shut behind him, Harry grinned and manipulated a little fire chakra to make his overly gelled hair burst into a three foot pillar of flame. He was also careful to manipulate the fire to keep all the heat away from the kid's scalp. In fact, it probably felt like a cool breeze was blowing through his hair, rather than it being consumed in an unnaturally large fire.

But of course the prank didn't end there. Before the formerly blond haired boy noticed his head was on fire, people nearby in the Alley started screaming and pointing, greatly confusing Harry's new favorite target. And then it got better. Half a dozen of the surrounding crowd, including what _had_ to be the ponce's father, given the similarities of appearance, all unleashed torrents of water from their wands towards the literally flaming boy.

One of these streams of water probably would have been enough to knock him over, given that he had no warning or understanding of why people were suddenly attacking him with water. All half dozen together were enough to send him tumbling down the street a good dozen feet, before he finally ended up a thoroughly soaked mostly bald boy with heavily singed and ripped clothes.

Silence filled the street for a moment as the boy's father rushed forward to explain why he had been blasted by water, but this silence was broken by Harry's laughter. He had quickly moved to the entrance of the shop to get a better view while the tailor had been distracted by the fire, and now that it was over, he was incapable of keeping hold of his laughter any longer at the sight of the incredibly disheveled child.

Some of the surrounding crowd quickly turned their own chuckles into coughs as the bald child pointed at the loudly and openly laughing Harry and said, "You! You did this! My father is going to ruin you, you little mudblood!"

Most of the crowd remained silent, apparently torn between humor and disapproval at the slur, but Harry continued to laugh. However, he did manage to sputter out a few sentences between guffaws, "Me? You think I did this? But I'm just a _mudblood_ who hadn't even gone to Hogwarts, nor gotten my wand. How could I have done this? I'm just laughing because you look...Does someone have a camera? Surely this needs to be immortalized..."

The bald boy continued to snarl mostly incoherently, but his father quickly grabbed him and murmured, "Come on Draco," quickly ushering him away from the crowd. Apparently he was less eager to see his son photographed at this moment than Harry was.

Harry kept laughing for another half a minute as he clutched the door frame to Madam Malkin's before he noticed the weird looks people were giving him. But he shrugged that off and headed back into the shop to finish getting measured. While that was happening, Malkin's assistant who had earlier been measuring Draco looked up at him a little hesitantly, then quietly said, "You need to be careful around people like him. Yeah, they might be jerks, but the pureblood families have a lot of power in this world. The Malfoys more than most. And things can be difficult enough for people like us in this world without purebloods actively trying to make things harder."

Harry glanced over at her and smiled as he replied. "Malfoy? That's the Draco kid's last name? And what do you mean 'people like us'?"

"Oh. Well, muggleborns."

Harry's eyes widened in realization. "Oh, that's what he meant when he was talking about mudbloods? People who have muggle parents? He was going on about people who didn't know about magical society, but never really defined what 'mudblood' referred to. Other than someone who doesn't know what Quidditch is, apparently. Eh...I think I will be fine though. It's not like I was going to actually get along with that git regardless of what first impressions were."

She shrugged uncomfortably at his dismissive attitude, but didn't say anything else as she finished the measuring.

A few minutes later, Harry found himself in the bookstore called Flourish and Blotts, where he approached the owner.

"Ah, here for your school books for Hogwarts? What year are you? I know each of the lists by heart, so no need to give specifics. Just electives if you are that far."

"Sure. I'm a first year. I was hoping you could help me with a couple other books too though." He followed the older man along as he collected each of the required textbooks for his first year. "Well, really I need two things. First, I was hoping that there was some sort of comprehensive introduction to the Wizarding World for muggleborns. I keep hearing references to stuff that is common knowledge to those born in this world that it seems almost expected I know as well, regardless of the fact I have known of magic for all of a week."

"Oh, sure. We have something like that. Of course you were given the standard pamphlet with your letter, like goes to all muggleborns, but you are right that it is hardly enough to do more than introduce the very basics. Here you are." Harry didn't comment on the reference to a pamphlet he had certainly not received, but just accepted the book as the shopkeeper handed over _An Introduction to What You Need to Know About Magic for Muggleborns, by Muggleborns_. "This one is the best. There are a couple similar things written by purebloods about Wizarding society and culture that might be good later, but I have been told that they apparently are not very good at first introducing the new concepts to muggleborns that we tend to just take for granted."

"Yeah, that looks good. Also, I was hoping you could point me in the right direction for a book detailing mythical magical abilities, or something like that."

This caused the bookstore owner to furrow his brow in confusion. "Well, that's a little more uncommon of a request, especially from a muggleborn first introduced to magic. Usually you want to know all about cool curses and what kind of interesting spells you will be taught at Hogwarts. But I think I do have something along those lines." He spent a minute looking down one of stacks in the back of the store before eventually smiling as he pulled out _Lost Powers: Tales of the Legendary Magical Abilities Lost to our World_, and handed it over to Harry.

Harry grinned at the man and replied, "This looks great. Thanks."

* * *

><p>Hagrid had entered the bookstore not long after that, and had escorted him around to pick up the rest of his school supplies. It was pretty boring for the most part, though Harry made sure to remember that he needed to come back to the Apothecary and pick up some of the more useful potions he had seen in passing.<p>

"Just yer wand left. Oh, an' I need tah get yeh a birthday present."

"Oh. That's nice of you. You don't have to do that though. I mean we just met, and you already got me the cake."

"Aww, well I know I don't have tah, but I was friends with yeh mum and dad, an' I wish I had been able tah get yeh presents every birthday. I know...How 'bout a pet? Yeh are allowed tah bring a toad, a cat, or an owl. An owl is best though. Useful, 'cause they can carry mail, an' they mostly look after themselves."

Harry was a little skeptical though. Afterall, he could teleport wherever he wanted, and so could wizards from what he had seen. What was the point of mail at all? "Well, I guess. An owl seems kind of boring though. Can't I get something interesting like a dragon or dire wolf? Do those actually exist?"

Hagrid got a giant smile at that comment, though the smile mostly faded away after a few moments. "Err...Well, I would love tah help yeh out in that, but dragons an' dire wolves are a little misunderstood by the Ministry. Dragons are illegal to own 'cept by licensed dragon reserves. An' dire wolves have been mostly hunted into extinction." At this point, Hagrid's eyes started to become a little watery and he started sniffing loudly. "I would love tah have one myself. 'Specially a dragon. It's always been a dream of mine. But a nice dire wolf pack would be great too."

"Huh...That's too bad. Well, if all the interesting pets are controlled by the Ministry, I suppose an owl would be nice too in case I need to send a letter for...well, for some reason, I guess."

They ended up settling on a pure white snowy owl which seemed to like him. It did take a while to name the thing something that she didn't immediately reject though. It was actually kind of strange to watch the bird turn its beak away at each name offered, before it eventually nodded at Hagrid's suggestion of Hedwig, who was apparently someone from magical history. Certainly it wasn't behavior Harry was used to from birds, not even those well trained to carry messages. He had at first thought that something magical was done to the owls to make them much more intelligent, but Hagrid denied this. According to him, there were a few spells cast on the birds to improve their ability to carry letters and find the correct recipient, but nothing that would make it act like this. Harry just shrugged and told Hedwig that he was very impressed with her intelligence.

He didn't want to spend a lot of time on it though, because it was time for him to get his wand, which he had been looking forward to. And so they entered a store with a sign which read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 b.c. It probably said something about him that his immediate reaction to seeing the sign was to lay a genjutsu on it which changed it to read Ollivanders: Masturbators of Fine Wands since 382 b.c. as he walked in. He might have two centuries of experience, but if he was going to be forced to live as a kid again, he was at least going to enjoy the benefits of being allowed to be immature.

The inside of the shop was very dim and filled with tight rows of stacks of small, narrow boxes which he assumed held wands. The shop also held a creepy old man under some kind of invisibility magic. It was a pretty good spell too, and Harry might have missed him if it were not for the Sharingan's ability to see the magic of the spell. It seemed like this Ollivander liked scaring people, or possibly just deliberately being weird.

So when he dropped his invisibility spell and greeted him, Harry just grinned at the man and replied, "Hello Mr. Ollivander. I'm here to get my wand."

If Ollivander was surprised that he hadn't Harry hadn't jumped at his appearance like Hagrid did, he concealed it well, only giving a small twitch of one eyebrow. "Ah...yes, well I thought I would be seeing you soon, Mr. Potter. You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work. Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power, and excellent for transfigurations. Though of course it is the wand that chooses the wizard."

By this point Ollivander had approached so close that his face was almost touching Harry's. Yes, his new sign out front would probably get him in trouble if he acted this way all the time. Maybe that would teach him to tone the creepiness _way_ down.

"So...That's nice about my parents, but can I get my wand now?"

"Ah yes." The man gave another of his odd smiles with his glinting silver eyes as he pulled out a tape measure. "Which is your wand arm?"

"Well, I'm right handed, if that's what you mean."

After the apparently magical tape measure took a number of measurements from him, many of which couldn't possibly be relevant, Ollivander finally started to hand him wands and asked that he wave them, all of which seemed to produce none of the results the man was looking for. This went on for about half an hour before Ollivander finally muttered to himself, "Hmm...tricky customer, I see. Well, we may as well try it. Holly and phoenix feather, an odd combination, but it might just work for you. Eleven inches, nice and supple."

Harry shrugged and grabbed the wand from Ollivander, much like so many others attempts. It was at that point that things deviated sharply from how they had gone before. While he had been testing wands, he had asked Ollivander what exactly was supposed to happen. The man had claimed that the reaction differed a little with each wand and each customer, but that generally sparks or an aura, or sometimes music appeared. This was not what happened when Harry waved the holly and phoenix wand.

Instead, it exploded.

It didn't make something in front of it explode. Well, yes. It did that too, but more importantly to Harry is that the wand itself ignited into a fireball while in his hand, along with everything for about ten feet in front of the wand. Harry rapidly channeled chakra into the limb to reinforce it, preventing more than his skin and a bit of the muscle in his hand from being burned away. Luckily, though the fire had burned fairly hot, it had been very brief before the wand itself was consumed in flames, leaving only ashes to fall away from Harry's hand. A few of the smaller bones in his hand were also broken from the force of the explosion even with chakra reinforcement, but Harry wasn't too concerned about that. As long as none of his hand was actually blown off, he should regenerate fast enough to cover it up.

In fact, given the fact that Ollivander had leaped out of the way at the last moment, but still been caught in the edges of the flames, he wouldn't really need to make any distractions at all. Hagrid tried to rush over to ask if he was ok, but Harry just waved him away with his left hand and told him to go check on Ollivander. By the time Ollivander had been able to extinguish the smoldering of his robes and cast a few minor healing spells on his own burns, Harry was able to remove his once again whole right hand from where he had hidden it in his robes.

"So, I assume that wasn't normal? Uhh...Sorry about all your wands too." Harry pointed over one of the large stacks of wand boxes which had been more or less consumed in the explosion.

"Oh my. How interesting. No, not to worry, Mr. Potter. Hopefully I can salvage some of them, and if not...well, it wasn't your fault. And to be able to see such a thing is worthwhile of its own merit. I'm glad your hand is ok as well. Perhaps the magic released protected it from the damage somehow? Hmmm..."

Harry frowned at that, and waited for Ollivander to continue. However, the man had just trailed off and was now staring at him in an almost predatory fashion, so Harry uncomfortably asked, "Such a thing? What does that mean, exactly? I assume you didn't expect something like this?"

Ollivander chuckled almost gleefully. "Oh, no. Of course not. Why something like that hasn't happened for centuries. And even then, I doubt it was remotely to this extent."

Hagrid just looked between the two of them with a confused expression, but Harry was starting to get more annoyed than disturbed by Ollivander. "Something like _what_ exactly? What made the wand explode like that?"

Ollivander was grinning wildly by this point. "Oh, you were much too powerful for the wand. You see, that wand _did_ choose you, just as a wand is meant to. But in the moment that a wand chooses a wizard, it pulls upon the wizard's magic, which rushes into the wand. That's what creates the normal effects of sparks, an aura, or whatever else happens - pure undirected magic flowing through the wand. But a wand can only handle so much magic.

Destroying a wand because too much magic flowed through it is incredibly rare though. Mostly because frankly the vast majority of wizards don't have enough magic to make their wand smoke even if they were trying, much less something like the display you just did on accident. But also because generally by the time even the most powerful wizard is strong enough to manage something like that, they have learned the control not to. That an eleven year old is strong enough to accidentally release power that Dumbledore or the like would have difficulty releasing on purpose is simply extraordinary."

Harry snorted in amusement at that. He really shouldn't have been surprised. This sort of thing was exactly the type of thing he had struggled with for years in his childhood as Naruto before he had managed to get his chakra control to a reasonable level. He overloaded jutsu's before, now he was overloading wands. "Well, it's nice that this is so extraordinary and has caught your interest, but is there a way to fix it? The letter said I needed a wand for Hogwarts. In fact, it kind of seems like the most important part."

Ollivander did finally settle down from his previous euphoric state at that. "Ah, yes indeed. Well, while I have never had a customer with this particular problem before, the solution should be fairly simple. Just use a wand which has not chosen you. The only real difference between a wand which has chosen you and is highly compatible with you and one which has not is that the more compatible a wand is with its user, the more it magnifies their magic. Using one that is very incompatible will have the opposite effect - instead of magnifying the magic flowing through it, it will reduce the power from what you send into the wand. Ideally into an amount that does not overload the wand.

Just pick one you tried earlier and focus on the feeling you probably felt the moment before the wand...err...exploded. It might take a little while, but you need to push your magic down your arm and into the wand, rather than having it pull like it does when a wand chooses you. Ideally less magic than last time though."

Harry nodded and waited to make sure everyone was out of the line of fire this time before picking up a random wand which looked nice and pushing as little spiritual energy into it as he could manage. It wasn't that difficult. He didn't know how to actually craft magic into spells, but the feeling of its movement through him when the wand 'chose' him wasn't _that_ different from chakra manipulation, so he could duplicate it fairly easily.

This time the fireball only extended about five feet in front of him, and Harry had been prepared for it by hardening the skin of his hand to near diamond levels with earth manipulation to prevent damage. So Harry was pretty pleased with his progress, though he expected Ollivander might be upset with the further damage to his little shop.

He was very wrong about that. If anything, Ollivander seemed more bizarrely excited than before. "Definitely a tricky customer, yes. The trickiest I have ever encountered in all my years. Try a few more. Let's see if we can get an even less compatible one. And try and focus on less magic as well."

And so Harry tried another half-dozen wands, all of which produced slight variations in the size of the explosion and flames, but all of which were definitely reduced to ash after Harry was finished with them. And with each destroyed wand, Ollivander's grin grew wider, until it was almost inhuman in size. Finally, he said, "Ok, that's enough. Clearly I will have to do something _special_ for you. Come back tomorrow afternoon and I will have something that should work. It may well be my finest creation yet. I think that we can expect great things from you though. Great things indeed."

And at that Harry quickly headed back into the alley, eager to get away from the old man with the still-creepy grin who was for some reason beyond pleased that he had completely trashed the man's shop. Even using magic for assistance, it would take hours to put his shop back in order, and Harry had totally destroyed a good ten percent of Ollivander's entire stock. Anyone that pleased after something like that was someone Harry thought it was probably a good idea to avoid.

"Well, I guess it's time to get home Hagrid. We still need to have that cake you brought." He grinned brightly at the large man, who smiled more tentatively back at him.

**A/N:**

I started chapter four intending to cover everything I need to cover before September 1. But it was getting pretty long, so I ended here, and will cover the rest of the fun with Ollivander and a couple other things next chapter. It should be out more quickly than past chapters though, since it is already partially written.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	5. Compatibility Part 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**Chapter 5: Compatibility Part 2**

The prior night's birthday celebration had gone well with Hagrid. It had been especially amusing watching his relatives sit in silence as they waffled back and forth between terror and amazement looking at the giant man while he extremely awkwardly tried to engage them in conversation. Eventually Harry had been forced to rescue them and carry the conversation. It was either that or burst out laughing, which probably would have been rude.

But it had turned out to be rather interesting. Though certainly not the smartest person Harry had ever met, they had eventually stumbled upon Hagrid's passion as a conversation topic - magical creatures. And on that topic, Hagrid could, and had, rambled on for hours. But they were very interesting hours for Harry, who learned a great deal about all the impressive magical creatures which could be found in the magical world. He was pretty sure his relatives had not been especially reassured to find that so many of the deadly creatures from myth they might have heard of really existed, and not a few they hadn't.

But today, he needed to return to Diagon Alley and hopefully receive a wand which worked. And maybe take a look at that Knockturn Alley place Hagrid had warned him to stay away from. That sounded pretty interesting.

So after using a Chameleon technique that bent the light around him to keep him invisible, he activated Kamui and disappeared from Privot Drive, reappearing about ten feet in the air above a fairly untraveled area of Diagon Alley he had noticed the previous day. After dropping silently to the ground and extending his senses to verify that no one was close enough to see him, he removed the invisibility technique and started towards Ollivanders.

He did have to stop once he reached the outside of Ollivander's shop though. His illusion on the sign was still there. He had purposefully made the thing fairly fragile, so injecting even something as weak as magic into it would dispel the illusion. So the fact that it was still there meant it probably just hadn't been noticed by very many people. But then, how often do people _really_ look at the signs of well-known buildings. If they already know what the shop is, why bother looking at the sign to find out. Maybe he could add a seal to the sign that would prevent anyone over a certain age from seeing it? It was an amusing idea, but a seal like that would take weeks to create, though he supposed it might be useful for other things too. A project for another time though.

For now, he went ahead and entered the shop, and walked directly up to the once again invisible man. Did he really spend his time just standing in silence under an invisibility spell in a dim shop waiting for someone to enter?

But eventually even Ollivander seemed to get tired of having someone stare directly at him while he was supposed to be invisible, so he said, "Ah, good. Mr. Potter, back for your wand, I see. I made something quite special for you. Yes, quite special. My finest work, if I may say so. If you would wait just one moment while I go and retrieve it."

Harry just rolled his eyes, already having waited one moment while Ollivander tried to have a staring match while invisible. But eventually the man did return from the back of his shop, reverently holding a wooden box in front of him. After carefully opening the box, he revealed what looked like a metal wand.

"This may well be the finest creation I have ever made. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am very close to certain it is the absolute worst wand _ever_ crafted. Certainly it is the worst wand currently in existence."

Harry paused and scratched the back of his head in confusion at the unexpected explanation, if it could be called that. "Wait...It is both your finest creation and the worst wand ever crafted? How can it be both? And why are you giving me the worst wand ever created?"

Ollivander's smile grew wider at that as he replied, "Ah, but you see, Mr. Potter, crafting a truly terrible wand is as much a work of art as creating a truly great one. Though admittedly it is an area of wand crafting with significantly less competition. Still, the accomplishment is nothing to scoff at."

He gave a shrug of his shoulders as he looked down at the metal rod in the box and stroked it almost lovingly as he continued, "Anyone can make a mediocre wand. Take a few days to teach them the right spells and have them shove a magical focus material into a stick, and it can be used as a wand, if a poor one. Of course a great wand is much more difficult, and takes a lifetime of dedication and not insignificant talent to learn to carve the wood just so to allow a perfect flow of magic, and infuse the focus into it just right in the optimal amounts and positions to most powerfully bind with a wizard's magic. If done correctly, a masterfully crafted wand can powerfully focus and magnify the magic the wizard puts into his spells.

But it is just as difficult to create the opposite. A piece of wood, or in this case metal, molded to create the maximum blockage against the user's magic. I even made this beautiful thing out of cold iron. Almost all metal channels magic very poorly, but cold iron resists it like nothing else on this planet. Then I found precisely the wrong magical materials for you. Weak materials too. Barely magical at all, but they should be just enough to act as a focus. I used Horklump spines in this case. Based on the magical properties of what wands reacted most weakly with you yesterday, there should be barely any connection with your magic at all with such an opposing and weak magical focus."

Still looking adoringly at the wand, if it could even be called that, Ollivander slowly removed it from the box and offered it towards Harry. "This is a wand that is almost equally appalling at all branches of magic, though it will be especially terrible at transfiguration. It might be almost just poor at defensive magics such as shields and wards. Truly a magnificent creation. I have never created its equal."

Harry snorted in amusement, though he did accept the wand from Ollivander. "You have never seen its equal at just how poorly it channels magic, and especially how much it will fight against and weaken the flow of my own magic?" At Ollivander's excited nod, Harry had to just shake his head, but he did hold out the wand in front of him, once again channeling as little magic as he could manage through the thing.

This produced a pitiful dribble of a half dozen dull brown sparks which dropped from the end of the wand to the floor, but Harry supposed that was far preferable to blowing up. He sent another tiny burst of pure spiritual energy down his arm into the wand again, and this time only produced two sparks, one of which was a light purple, and the second was a yellowish green. Clearly precise control was still going to be an issue.

As he continued to experiment with very little success at controlling exactly how much magic he sent down the wand in an attempt to duplicate earlier numbers of sparks, he asked, "So what is a Horklump, anyway?"

Ollivander still seemed quite enthused with the entire process and was watching Harry's experiments avidly, but he was happy to answer. "Oh, Horklumps are a type of magical mushroom. Basically they are a type of weed for magical gardens. They eat earthworms and attract garden gnomes. Quite annoying things, all told. And they don't really have any magical use. Or should I say they didn't until now!" Clearly still excited, he gave a chuckle that came out as more of a mix between a cackle and a cough, but Harry just ignored that.

"Hmm...Do you think that you could sharpen the end of the...wand, I guess I can call it. Having a sharp point would be useful."

Ollivander frowned at this, apparently losing a little of his earlier enthusiasm, though he eventually slowly nodded. "Well, I could. I must warn you that even something so minor as sharpening the end of the wand might cause minor improvement to its overall performance. I already created it in an optimal shape to most poorly channel your magic."

Harry shrugged in response. "A minor improvement should be fine. It clearly isn't about to explode into flames now. And until I get better control over my magic, it would probably be better to stab someone a little rather than hit them with a spell to knock them unconscious and end up stopping their heart on accident, or something similarly dangerous."

Ollivander eventually nodded, though he clearly wasn't happy about lessening this wand's claim to the title of worst wand ever created. "I suppose so. And eventually, as your control over your magic improves, we might be able to upgrade you to a new wand as well. Give it a few years, and I could probably make something similar with the hoof shavings of a winged-horse. Barely any more magical than the hooves of a regular horse, but it shouldn't be quite so terrible a fit with your magic as the Horklump spines. Why, some day you might even reach sufficient control for me to use the spurs of a platypus. Those actually have enough magic to be detectable."

"Wait...A platypus? Like the duck-billed platypus from Australia? I thought those were just normal animals?"

Ollivander laughed at this. And yes, his laugh was just as creepy as his chuckle. "You thought a creature with a duck's bill, webbed feet, fur, that lays eggs, and has a venomous spur is a normal animal? Ah...muggles are quite amusing, aren't they? They manage to stumble across one of the odder creatures even for the magical world and document it too thoroughly for us to cover it up. But they are happy to just create new classifications for it, and go on with their lives, content with their certainty that there must be a scientific explanation for everything."

Harry just cleared his throat and ignored that. "So, I guess I can leave it here to be sharpened, and pick it up later today, as well as pay?"

Ollivander nodded, quick to take back his precious masterpiece, even if just for a few more hours. Harry just shook his head and was equally quick to leave the shop.

* * *

><p>Knockturn Alley turned out to be rather boring for the most part. Certainly it was significantly more decrepit and disreputable than Diagon Alley, though Diagon Alley wasn't what would be defined as truly clean by modern standards either. But it seemed more just poor and rundown than, as Hagrid had described it, dangerous and Dark, whatever that meant.<p>

Harry had spent the last half an hour wandering into various shops and looking around, but though he had seen a few cursed items that sounded kind of interesting based on the shop owner's descriptions, most of the shops just seemed to be filled with random junk. What was the point of buying shrunken heads or human finger bones? He sort of understood how some people liked to take trophies of defeated enemies, though it was never something he had been interested in. But why get such things from someone who they had never even met, and most likely just came from some midnight grave robbing. Maybe they were useful as components to some sort of magical spell or something?

Honestly, based on the meandering and generally unhelpful descriptions given by the shop owners, he was pretty sure they were mostly just there to provide atmosphere. Though why someone would actively want an atmosphere like that was beyond him. Then again, this was a culture that saw the filthy and practically falling apart Leaky Cauldron as a good first impression into the world of magic, so what did he know.

Regardless, it was a rather boring trip, or it was until a group of four men in somewhat worn robes started following him. Not that a mugging, or whatever they wanted rated as particularly interesting for Harry, but he was curious enough to walk to a narrow and out of the way alleyway between two shops he had passed earlier to see what they wanted.

After turning around to face the four who crowded into the entrance of the alley behind him, Harry asked, "So, why are you following me?"

The four men glanced at each other, probably a little unnerved that an eleven year old kid was confronting them by himself in the middle of Knockturn Alley with such confidence, but they gathered courage from the other's presence after a few seconds. All four pulling out their wands might have also had something to do with their increased confidence.

One of them then nudged the man closest to the entrance to the alley, who cast some kind of barrier around the alley. Harry could have torn the magic apart with his chakra as it was being cast, but it didn't seem to do anything directly to him. Which meant it probably silenced noises from the alley or just kept someone from noticing anything going on inside the barrier. Assuming that was the case, it would benefit Harry more than not, so he left it for now.

Once the man in the back finished whatever the spell was, he nodded to the others, prompting the man in the front and the apparent leader to speak to Harry. "You are Harry Potter, then? The Boy-Who-Lived? You don't look like much." He spoke with a heavy sneer, clearly trying to emphasize his disdain and try and be as intimidating as possible. If that was his goal, he was doing a poor job of it, but then again, Harry's views of what was intimidating did set the bar a little higher than most.

"Yeah, that's me. Did you want an autograph or something? I have got to say, this isn't really the most polite way of asking. I guess I do appreciate the discretion though. If you had come up to me in the middle of the street, everyone would have been swarming me again once they heard you call me Harry Potter. How did you know who I am anyway though? Pretty much everyone recently hasn't been able to tell when they see me." Harry had to force himself to keep a straight face as the thugs got more and more annoyed at Harry not even seeming to notice their attempts at intimidation, but he did finally manage to keep himself under control.

"We were given a description. We don't want your autograph though kid. We were told that you had withdrawn about one hundred thousand galleons from Gringotts. Take us to the money and no one has to get hurt."

Harry had to muffle a curse as the leader of the thugs talked. "Wait, let me guess. The goblins told you. I really should have known. They didn't stop at just making it illegal for anyone else to run a bank. No, that would encourage a lot of people to keep their own money safe. But quietly hand out lists of exactly who doesn't have their money defended by the goblins, and it becomes unsafe to keep your money anywhere else, regardless of any fees. Or better yet, sell that information to thieves. Get paid to force everyone to become your customer, while technically avoiding becoming thieves themselves." Harry shook his head, growing more annoyed with the goblins the more he learned.

"You know, you are just helping the goblins when you do this sort of thing. You are just doing their work for them. Do you enjoy being the toadies for a bunch of honorless goblins?" Harry still showed no fear at all as he spoke. He sounded, if anything, slightly annoyed, which seemed to anger the muggers.

"We don't care kid. Just give us the money right now, or bad stuff will happen to you. You are all alone now. No Dumbledore to come in and save you."

Harry snorted in amusement, though he did wonder why they thought he would look to Dumbledore to save him. He had seen the man exactly once in his life on the night he was left with the Dursleys. "Well, whatever. I'm not going to give you my money, so I guess you had better do whatever 'bad stuff' you have planned. Did you even plan that far ahead? Surely you could have said something a little more specific than 'bad stuff' if so. You sure you want to do that to the Boy-Who-Lived though? I'm pretty sure people won't be happy with you torturing and possibly killing me. Though I have seen your faces now. Do you intend to kill me afterwards anyway to make sure I can't identify you?"

The leader of the group, or Thug 1 in Harry's mind, replied, "No, we are going to memory charm you after we are done. So you get out of this alive and unharmed as long as you just give us what we want. But if you don't, you might wake up missing a few fingers _and_ your gold. You won't remember us, but I'm pretty sure you will wish you had just gone along with it. And who cares what people think. One hundred thousand galleons is enough to take us to somewhere they have never even heard of Harry Potter. Now quit trying to talk us out of it and take us to your money or we start the hurting you part."

Harry just gave an exaggerated and uncaring shrug, clearly still unwilling to give up his gold. Harry's dilemma at the moment was what he should do with these men. Defeating them would be easy enough, but he would prefer not to reveal more than necessary to people who were effectively working for the goblins. He was beginning to think that the goblins would be a bigger problem in the future than he had anticipated, so best to deny them significant further information.

His response was also largely dependent on what exactly these men were actually willing to do to him. Just threatening him was worth some bruises and a few hours of unconsciousness. Maybe a broken bone or two. But if they were really willing to follow through with their threats...Well, that escalated things.

So Harry was ready when Thug 1 hesitated for only a moment before yelling out "Crucio," and unleashed a red bolt of light from the end of his wand. He had no idea what would happen if that particular piece of magic hit him, but he assumed it would be bad. Still, it seemed best to find out so he would have a better idea of what appropriate retaliation would be. So rather than immediately attacking them or even dodging, he quickly used a body replacement technique to switch himself with Thug 2 while simultaneously using a transformation technique to take on the appearance of Thug 2 and laying an illusion on the other thugs to make Thug 2 look like him.

It turned out that the spell Thug 1 had used was some kind of torture magic, since Thug 2 immediately fell over and started writhing and screaming on the ground. The magic appeared to be quite effective though. He hasn't heard screams like that since Anko had retired late in his time as Hokage. But Harry just continued to quietly watch from beside Thug 1 as the man tortured Thug 2 under the incorrect belief he was torturing Harry.

Still, after about ten seconds, Harry was beginning to think that he should step in and stop the spell. Torture was necessary at times, and a little pain could be useful in making sure people remembered that attacking him was a very bad idea. But even if this spell was what they had planned for him, it seemed a little excessive, especially since the one receiving the pain wasn't the one who tried to attack him, directly anyway.

But before he could intervene, Thug 1 released the spell and while panting slightly asked, "Now, you want to tell us where the gold is, or do you want more?"

Harry put his hand on Thug 1's shoulder and released the illusion and transformation techniques as he replied, "Well, I'm still not going to give you your money, but I'm pretty sure your friend doesn't want more."

As both the leader and the other two behind Harry gaped at him, Harry didn't wait for a response. These men had tried to torture him, and he couldn't just let that go. Well, he could, but given that these men had made sure that no one had seen them enter with Harry, he could safely do something about it without anyone finding out he was responsible.

So he lashed out, breaking Thug 1's forearm to make him drop his wand and creating twin small fireballs, which he spat at the other two standing men's wands. If it burnt their hands a little as well as destroying their wands...well, they really shouldn't be party to torturing children.

Once all four were disabled, at least for the moment, he grabbed two by the arms and activated Hiraishin. As teleportation techniques went, he overall preferred Kamui because of its versatility. He could go anywhere with it, while Hiraishin required a seal to have been placed at the target location in order to allow for teleportation. But if that marker was placed, Hiraishin was superior in every way as far as actual teleportation went.

Unlike Kamui, which took something like a tenth of a second for him to leave reality and re-enter even a well known target location, and slightly longer for somewhere he didn't know well, Hiraishin was truly instantaneous. And more importantly, Kamui gave no sense of what was around the location he was teleporting into, so it took a precious few fractions of a second to get his bearings. But from the moment he locked onto the Hiraishin seal he was going to teleport to, he had an innate knowledge of everything within about ten feet of that seal. And he could teleport into anywhere within that ten feet in any position he wanted, including directly behind an enemy's back with a blade already thrusting forward.

It made Hiraishin an incredibly deadly combat technique, but far less useful for general travelling, since he didn't like to just scatter seals everywhere he went. But in this case, he was taking these men to the prison he had prepared a little under four years ago, so he had the seals already placed.

The prison was an exact duplicate of a structure and set of seals he had created during his life as Naruto after a prison break in Konoha had left a dozen ninja dead, and twice that number of prisoners free. So he had created a prison without any of the weakness of the old one - namely the guards. Everything in the structure was maintained by seals, ranging from seals to prevent any chakra (or magic in this case) use of any kind from anyone other than him to storage seals built into bowls that regularly released enough gruel with all the nutrients necessary to keep the prisoner healthy for his lifetime. Other seals kept the prison and prisoners clean, returning any waste to the earth near the prison, and yet others maintained temperature, lighting, air, and everything else that might be needed.

The primary defenses of the place was simply that no one knew where it was and no one other than him could get to the structure, which was a quarter mile underground in a random isolated area with no tunnel leading to it, even if someone did find the location. Not to mention that seals made the place virtually indestructible. The prison might have originally taken over a year to design and a few months to create even with his abilities with earth manipulation, but the near complete lack of required maintenance and total lack of any prisoners ever escaping made it worthwhile.

Harry had decided that he might not want to deal directly with the government more than he had to early in this life, so he thought the same thing might come in handy here. And this was the perfect example of him being right. While he could give these men to the authorities in the magical world who handled such things, whoever they were, that would mean revealing exactly how he subdued them, which he would prefer to keep as quiet as was conveniently possible for now.

So within a few seconds he had all four of the men within the first four cells in his prison before they could even recover from the shock of their sudden and unexpected injuries and general change in circumstances.

"So...Whatever your names are. No, don't tell me, I don't care. I just want to explain your situation. For your attack on me, I am throwing you into my private prison, as I'm sure you have noticed. For you..." He pointed Thug 1 as he continued, "you actually tried to torture me, and so you will be here for five years. The plaque on the wall behind you is spelled to count down that time so you know how much longer you have before I come pick you up to release you. The rest of you will be here for one year.

I encourage you to use that time to really think about your life and what you did. You were trying to torture a child for money. If that's the kind of person you want to be, well I can't really do anything to help you. If it's not, we can talk about it when it comes time to release you, and I can help you become an actually productive member of society. Whatever you think or people have told you in the past, it isn't impossible to change and learn to live happy, fulfilled lives without being harmful to society."

Harry paused in his speech as he looked at the four men, who were still too shocked to respond. "As added incentive to really think about what you want with the rest of your life, based on our discussion when I release you, one of two things will happen. Regardless, I will make it impossible for you to reveal any information about me or this place, but if I am satisfied that you will probably not relapse into crime, I will help you make that a reality. If I am not...Well, I will still release you after you have served your time, but I'm going to seal your magic when I do. You can live as a muggle from then on. And don't think you can lie to me. You won't succeed and it will just annoy me."

The four thugs were still too shocked to speak, or possibly just still in too much pain, since there were some random moans coming from some of the cells, which Harry gave very little attention to.

With that, he gave a brief wave to the four men and used Kamui to return him to the alleyway in Knockturn Alley, shaking his head and chuckling as he returned to his explorations. At least Knockturn Alley hadn't turned out quite as boring as he had feared.

* * *

><p>It was hours after he had returned from picking up his finished wand from Ollivander, and Harry had finally had a chance to read over the two extra books he had bought at the book store the day before. Luckily, he could use his Sharingan to assist him in the reading, given his general dislike for reading more than was absolutely necessary.<p>

The Sharingan eye effectively gave two advantages in reading. The first was because of its ability to perfectly and permanently record every detail seen by it, which meant that anything seen by the Sharingan could be recalled whenever he wanted as if he had a photograph of it. Of course this didn't actually give any automatic comprehension of the subject, just a picture of each of the pages of the book, assuming he flipped through it.

But the second advantage was that the Sharingan processed things it saw _much_ faster than a normal eye. Most had used this to allow greater time to plan actions in battle and give greater accuracy. It could also be used to increase reading speed though. In fact, if he channeled enough chakra to fully activate the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, his reading speed improved by a factor of a little over ten. Combined with several speed reading tricks Sakura had forced him to learn in his old life, he could now read almost as fast as he could turn the pages, which was probably why he was willing to bother with it at all.

He did occasionally miss small details with this trick, but it gave him enough of an idea of the information in the book that he could pause to read more closely what interested him, and remember what pages to call up to review later if that became necessary.

And in this case, it paid off. In addition to learning a number of other minor facts which would probably lessen his confusion once he arrived at Hogwarts a great deal, he found two particular things that he should be able to use to explain many of his abilities. The first was something called accidental magic, which was something apparently all magical children did from time to time, using potentially any kind of magic to achieve what they wanted in moments of high emotion. Well any child except him, probably because he already had enough control over his energies to prevent them randomly leaking out. That did still leave the question of why children didn't experience 'accidental magic' back during Naruto's time, but that would have to be something investigated more in the future.

But this meant that he could just call almost anything he did accidental magic, and there wasn't really any way to disprove it. It didn't even need a wand, which was good because doing true controlled wandless magic was supposed to be very difficult, and probably not something he could pass off in the near future.

The second was even better, and was something he found in the _Lost Powers_ book. Apparently in a lot of the old myths, the talent of being an Elemental sprang up quite commonly. But it had not appeared in centuries, at the least. And best of all, it was an amazingly vaguely used term. In fact, there was no real firm definition at all. Stories ranged from people being able to create and control small quantities of their element to people being able to rearrange entire mountain ranges, or turn an entire battle field into a raging inferno, or just turn themselves into their element. Merlin was even said to have been the only Elemental who could control all five elements. But regardless, the stories almost always included that the element was controlled and created without the use of a wand or a formal spell.

A lot of people claimed that if the ability existed at all, it was really just an affinity for spells of that element, so a Fire Elemental could cast fire spells with greater ease and more power, but that it had been greatly exaggerated by stories over the centuries. Well, they probably wouldn't believe that anymore after he was done.

In short, it was _perfect_.

**A/N:**

For the whole wand issue, just like Naruto's massive chakra reserves were both a blessing and a curse, the same will be true here in regards to magic. I also really wanted to include an Ollivander being incredibly proud of the worst wand ever created. I have seen literally hundreds of wand combinations and creations throughout fanfiction, most of them without anything even resembling originality, but I have never seen one like that. Usually in fanfiction the more powerful Harry is, the more powerful the wand Olivander makes. If Harry is more powerful than Merlin, he gets not a wand, but a staff (but of course it can shrink to wand sized, so there is no downside), and it is made of a dozen different one of a kind wand cores no one cares about, which will not matter in any way throughout the fic, but which manages to magnify his powers even _more_. As you have seen, I took a...different approach.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	6. Taking the Train

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thank you once again to those who reviewed.

I would like to comment on one concern that came up fairly regularly in reviews, which was that many people don't think that Harry punished the thugs who attacked him in the previous chapter harshly enough. And...you are probably right about that. I make no excuses for Harry's behavior, nor do I condone everything he has done and will do in this story. But like it or not, he tends to see even murderous attacks against him with the same seriousness others would see a group of five year olds throwing water balloons. It's not really a good thing, and will eventually get him in trouble, but that is how he is at this point in the story. Only when others he cares about are threatened does he generally become truly serious in his punishments.

**Chapter 6: Taking the Train**

Harry arrived at King's Cross Station about an hour before the train was scheduled to leave. He had already completed his morning workout, and sitting around Privet Drive sounded much less interesting than getting to the train and meeting some wizards and witches. So he had briefly said goodbye to Dudley and his aunt, making sure to mention that he didn't know if he would be returning for Christmas or not, but that he would either see them then, or next summer.

The two were still a little jumpy around him, as they had been ever since Hagrid's visit, but they were finally starting to settle down once again into their more normal behaviors - that of two people aware that they had absolutely no control over his actions and a bit tentative around him for fear of pranks, but not actively afraid of him. Occasionally they even acted like something vaguely resembling an actual family, if not a particularly loving one. Still, it was progress.

So once he finished saying goodbye, he then used his standard techniques of becoming invisible and using Kamui to teleport over to just above the train station before finding an abandoned area to become visible again. Hedwig had already been sent ahead to Hogwarts, and his school supplies were either stored in his sub-space dimension or in one of the several storage seals he had placed on his body over the past decade.

It only took about a minute after releasing his Chameleon technique and wandering out into the crowds that filled King's Cross Station for him to find the portal to platform nine and three quarters. It was well hidden from normal eyes, but with the Sharingan, the magic of the barrier itself was visible. And he kept his Sharingan active almost all the time behind the illusion which made his eyes appear their normal vibrant shade of green.

The barrier itself between the muggle side of King's Cross Station and the magical side of platform nine and three quarters was very interesting though. He really didn't know enough about magic to be able to tell much about exactly how it functioned, but it was by far the most complicated piece of magic he had seen so far, and that included the so called unbreakable goblin wards around Gringotts. Granted, those had a much higher sheer amount of magic running through them, but as for complexity? This portal won easily.

It seemed to be split into two different main parts of the enchantment. The concealment part was complicated enough, and he would want to take a closer look at it once he learned more about magic, but what really interested him was the stable portal. That piece was so complicated the only reason he could tell what it did at all was because he could see the bending of space with the Mangekyo Sharingan. The magic itself was far beyond him. But the fact that it could be done at all impressed Harry greatly. It had taken him almost four years to create something similar with seals, and he honestly was pretty sure that this was superior to his version.

It was one of the first things which had truly made him excited about learning magic. It was one thing to learn it as a curiosity just because he didn't really have anything better to do with his time while he waited for whatever prophesies he was supposed to be involved with to show up. But to see something that could actually be done better with magic than even he could manage with chakra...Well, that was motivation at its finest. Especially since he could see what seemed to be runes as the primary support for the magic.

He had discovered the subject of Ancient Runes a couple weeks ago when he had been casually looking around Diagon Alley during one of his return trips. As soon as he had, he began to study the subject. In fact it was the only subject he had started any studying in at all, which was probably especially unusual since it wasn't even one of the core subjects, and was not available for formal study until the third year of Hogwarts.

But it wouldn't have surprised those who knew him when he was Naruto. It had always been hard to motivate him to study almost anything. It was made especially difficult because he had always had a way of managing just fine without this academic knowledge. Sakura especially had hated that about him, since she insisted that it _should_ have been impossible to do some of the things he had done without at least a basic basic academic knowledge of multiple subjects. But he had just ignored her and gone right on creating S-Rank techniques before he bothered to obtain even an Academy level understanding of basic chakra theory.

That wasn't to say he was lazy. Harry was perfectly willing to practice and exercise sixteen hours a day or more. But he had always thrived when thrown directly into the practical applications of the theory he rarely bothered to learn. In fact, a significant amount of the time he had been able to do the impossible simply because he had never bothered to learn from all the textbooks that would have told him it shouldn't be possible. Then he would just keep working on what he wanted to do until he found a way.

However, there was one, and only one exception to his general resistance to putting any time into learning academic subjects. And that exception was seals. Seals were awesomely complicated. _Easily_ as complicated as all other branches of ninja techniques _combined_. And they were not something that could be just 'jumped into' either. It took a significant amount of learning just to know all the symbols and understand the intricate rules required to make even something as simple as a basic storage seal. The pure in-depth understanding required for more complicated tasks went up exponentially from there.

But during his first childhood, Naruto had found himself entranced by seals. He had spent thousands of hours poring over the symbols and rules that formed a basis of the subject. It had just made sense to him in a way that mathematics or chakra theory had not. And it had not taken long before he started getting to the practical applications he had never seen in learning something like how to calculate the exact angle needed to throw a kunai to hit a target a certain distance away. First with simple things like storage seals, but eventually, in spite of all of his power in other areas, he considered Seals the basis of his greatest power. It had been a seal that had given him his bloodlines, and ultimately seals that had provided the edge he needed in many of his most difficult battles during the Fourth Shinobi World War and even after.

More recently, it had not taken long to see the link between Ancient Runes and Seals. While obviously Ancient Runes were powered by magic rather than chakra, the purpose of the two disciplines was very similar. And as he had began to learn pieces of the many languages that made up Ancient Runes, he began to find that even some of the most basic rules of Ancient Runes were the same as the rules at the core of Sealing techniques. Of course there were differences too, but the pattern of similarities was beginning to give the appearance that Ancient Runes had evolved directly out of the Sealing Arts. This was especially apparent in some of the very oldest forms of Ancient Runes, such as Sumerian Runes, though he had been unable to find much on anything older than Ancient Egyptian Runes.

But once he had begun to see this link, as well as find his interest in a subject so similar to seals, he had bought a copy of every book in Flourish & Blotts on the subject. And ever since, he had began to put hours every day into reading through these books, starting with the Hogwarts textbooks, though he had many more to continue with once those were complete. But he was not nearly far enough to even begin significantly deciphering the magic behind the portal, so after giving it one last brief examination, he walked through to platform nine and three quarters.

It was still early enough that the platform was not very crowded, and almost everyone there was still in the process of saying goodbye to family members, so Harry ignored the scattered families for now and entered the bright crimson train, quickly finding an empty compartment and settling down to continue reading his Ancient Runes textbook. He was looking forward to meeting other wizards and witches, but there wasn't any point while they were still talking with their families, so he allowed himself to get lost in his book while he waited.

* * *

><p>It didn't turn out to be a very long wait. Just a little over a quarter hour, to be precise. At that point, the door to his compartment opened, very hesitantly at first, but with more confidence as the girl outside got a look into the compartment. Of course Harry had been aware of her since before she had even stopped outside the compartment. He wasn't <em>that<em> lost in his book.

She looked like she was about his age, and she had extremely bushy hair and somewhat oversized front teeth. Once she took a step into the compartment, she asked, "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Harry nodded as he answered, "Sure, have a seat," and helped the girl move her trunk into the storage space set aside for them.

Once the girl settled down in her seat, she sat perched on the edge, looking over at the book Harry had earlier been reading before speaking all in one rapid fire burst without taking any breaths. "So what were you reading? It looks like a textbook, but I don't recognize it from the first year course books. Are you a first year too? Of course I learned all my books by heart. I hope I am ready. I'm the first one in my family to have magic. I was ever so surprised when I received the letter from Hogwarts. I am Hermione Granger, by the way. Who are you?"

Harry chuckled quietly at Hermione's enthusiasm and replied, "Take a breath Hermione." He grinned a little wider as she blushed and breathed a bit deeply. "I am a first year, but this isn't a first year textbook. It's an introduction book on Ancient Runes. We don't even get the option to take the class until our third year, apparently, but it's an interesting subject, so I got started a little early, I guess. If you actually memorized your entire first year's text books, I'm sure you are more than ready though. I highly doubt anyone else in our classes will have done the same, muggleborn or otherwise."

After a short pause in which Harry looked at Hermione speculatively, he continued, "And my name is Harry Potter."

Her eyes widened at that and flicked up to his forehead, where now that she knew to look for it, the seal he had placed over his scar a month earlier would allow her to see the famous lightning bolt pattern. "Oh, wow," she exclaimed. "Are you really? Of course I have read all about you. I got a few extra books for background reading, and you're in _Modern Magical History_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ and _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century_."

Harry just shrugged. "Yeah, wizards seem to like to make a big deal over the whole thing," he said dismissively. "Anyway, are you looking forward to Hogwarts?"

Hermione seemed a bit surprised by his attitude towards his own fame, but she seemed willing to ignore it as she replied, "Oh yes. I'm a bit worried about not knowing some of the things that people who were raised by magical parents might, but I did my best to learn all I could in preparation. But I am very excited about all of the classes. There is just so much to learn about magic and the magical world. And Hogwarts is the very best school of magic there is. Which of the Houses do you think you will get into? I'm hoping for Gryffindor, myself. It sounds like the best house. I read that it was the house Professor Dumbledore was in. Though I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad." Once again she spoke without pausing for breath or giving Harry a chance to answer.

Harry just chuckled in response and said, "I will probably be in Gryffindor too. I read a little describing the four houses in one of the books I got, and that one sounds like it fits my personality best. I have been told that I am suicidally foolhardy several times in the past. Always rushing in headfirst without thought to the consequences and whatnot. It seems to work out ok though." He shrugged and ignored Hermione's slightly indignant look at his fairly negative portrayal of the Gryffindor traits. "I don't really think any one house is better than the others though. Just different."

Hermione raised her nose slightly, clearly disagreeing. "Well that wasn't the impression I received from what I read." But after a moment's thought, she seemed to force herself to be a little more conciliatory. "But I suppose there are some people like that in Gryffindor."

"Well, I'm sure it will work itself out well enough." Harry just shrugged, as he was perfectly willing to let it go. Hermione seemed nice, and there wasn't any reason to start a conflict over something quite that pointless this early on. So he allowed the conversation to move onto other things as they continued to get to know each other a little better.

* * *

><p>Over the next half an hour or so Harry had been talking to Hermione, and he had been growing more amazed the longer they talked. It turned out that Hermione was a virtual duplicate of Sakura. He would have been even more shocked if he hadn't already been half expecting further similarities with his old life such as he had already encountered.<p>

But even so, the similarities were impressive. Both were academic geniuses to a monumental degree with near perfect memories, but somewhat lacking in common sense or practical skills. Both had been ridiculed for and eventually became ashamed of their hair and a physical imperfection - excessively bushy hair and large front teeth in Hermione's case just as Sakura had hated her pink hair and large forehead as a child. Though both were also not nearly as unattractive as they believed, it seemed to have created identical deep insecurities.

Both had been isolated in their younger childhoods because of their intellect, perceived physical imperfections, and general bookworm ways, and had developed very poor people skills as a result. They even both had fangirl tendencies, though Hermione's mindless adoration seemed directed at authority figures in general and was in a non-romantic sense, for which he thanked the gods. Though mostly, he was just glad that she wasn't being a fangirl over him.

The only real major difference was that Sakura had tried to emulate Ino's brash personality, while Hermione had retreated inwardly, but overcompensated by being bossy and trying to show others her worth by demonstrating her impressive knowledge whenever possible. And she seemed a lot less physically abusive and instead just resorted to lecturing. He didn't mind that though. It was certainly a lot easier to ignore than repeated blows to the head. On the whole, it was rather nice. He had missed Sakura a lot, and though it probably wasn't the healthiest thing to look to Hermione as a 'replacement', she did seem to sort of fit a little too well for it to be ignored.

A few minutes earlier, another boy had asked to enter the compartment and been welcomed. Neville Longbottom turned out to be an almost painfully shy boy, and so hadn't contributed a lot to the conversation. But Harry had been able to draw him in a couple of times with questions about the magical world which he could better answer, being a pureblood and raised in the magical world.

He had also left his shell briefly when the conversation hit the topic of Herbology, which was apparently Neville's favorite subject, and one about which he was quite knowledgeable. Prior to Neville's comments, Harry's knowledge of Herbology had effectively been the question "is that like gardening?" It turned out the answer was "sort of, but with magical plants." Which, granted, _did_ make it more complicated. It sounded interesting anyway though. Harry had always enjoyed gardening and taking care of plants. Add in plants often even more beautiful than the best of the muggle varieties that will frequently literally try and kill you, and what's not to like?

Harry did make sure to praise Neville's knowledge, which the shy boy didn't seem to know how to take. Harry quickly realized that it was likely Neville had never really received encouragement or acknowledgement before. Harry could empathize from his own childhood as Naruto, and he made sure to remember to be encouraging towards Neville in the future. From personal experience, he knew the difference even a single person who cared for and acknowledged you could make.

Besides, he had an awesome toad named Trevor, which Neville let him hold. It made Harry question why he hadn't gotten Hagrid to get him a toad. Sure, Hedwig was very pretty, and impressively intelligent, but she wasn't nearly as awesome as a toad. Trevor even liked to escape too. Harry had been forced to catch the toad as he suddenly leaped away from his perch on Harry's lap several times already. And best of all, he was trying different angles of escape with irregular timing. Trevor was learning from his escape attempts. Harry couldn't wait to see what he would try in the future.

But after a few minutes of this, the Hogwarts Express finally pulled away from platform nine and three quarters, and they all took a pause from their conversation to look out the window to the crowds of families. Hermione's parents had already left, but Neville waved goodbye to his grandmother, who apparently took care of him, until the train turned a corner and was out of sight of the platform.

A few seconds later, before they could begin speaking again, there was a knock at the door to the compartment. All three of them looked up to see a redheaded boy who was quite tall for his age. The boy paused when confronted with all three of their gazes, but eventually said, "Err...Is anyone sitting there?" He pointed to the empty seat beside Harry. "Everywhere else is full."

"Sure, have a seat," said Harry as he gestured welcomingly to the seat the boy was pointing at.

As soon as he had said the words and the redhead started to move his trunk into the compartment, two other identical red-haired boys poked their heads in through the doorway. They looked a little older than the rest of the compartment's eleven years, and were likely related to the redhead who had entered a few seconds earlier given their similar appearances.

"Hey, Ron," one of them spoke. "Listen, we're going down the middle of the train - Lee Jordan's got a giant tarantula down there."

The other then spoke as they both looked around the compartment at Harry, Hermione, and Neville. "Looks like Ickle Ronniekins found some Ickle Firsties to be his friends."

Harry smiled back at the twins, but didn't say anything. The others seemed more hesitant though, with Hermione seeming unsure of how to answer the identical mischievous grins the twins gave while Neville just looked down at his feet.

Ron just glared at them and muttered in a tone of clear annoyance, "Whatever. Just go away. And keep your spider away too." When he spoke of the spider, his tone quickly shifted into one of genuine fear.

The twins just laughed and turned to leave the compartment, and one called over his shoulder, "Who knows," which was then picked up by the other, "where it will get too Ron." Then the first picked the statement up once again, "Guess you will have to watch," and finally finished by the second just as they shut the door, "Where you step."

Ron shuddered once again at their words before turning to the others in the compartment, apparently resolved to get his mind off of the spider possibly roaming the halls of the train. "Hi, I'm Ron Weasley. And those were my older brothers - Fred and George. Don't bother trying to tell them apart...even mum can't all the time. Probably best to keep your distance anyway. Those two are big pranksters, so don't trust anything they give you."

Harry's eyes lit up at the mention of some fellow pranksters. Perhaps they could teach him a thing or two about pranking using magic. "Oh really? Are they any good?"

Ron just shrugged and grimaced. "According to them they are the best pranksters that have been through Hogwarts in over a decade, even though they are just third years. They have gotten me enough times they might be telling the truth though."

Harry nodded, and put that topic aside for later. Clearly Ron was not particularly appreciative of his brother's talents in the fine art of pranks. "Anyway, I'm Harry Potter. Nice to meet you."

Hermione and Neville also quickly spoke up and introduced themselves, but Ron's mouth had dropped open slightly and he was staring at Harry's forehead, so Harry got the impression he probably wasn't paying them much attention. "Are you really?" He asked in an astonished voice.

"Why do people keep asking me that?" Harry asked in a confused tone with a frown. "Do they think that I am lying, or just that I don't know who I am?"

Ron flushed red and pulled his gaze from Harry's scar while the other two in the compartment also blushed a little and looked away for a moment. "No, it's just...Well, all the kids in the magical world grew up hearing stories about you. Even knowing you are the same age as me, it's kind of a shock to actually see you going to Hogwarts in the same year as me, you know?"

Harry waved it away and said, "It's no problem. I guess I'm just not used to people being that shocked to see me."

Hermione broke in at this point. "Well, from what I have read, there has been a lot of speculation about where exactly you have been for the past decade and what you have been doing. All Professor Dumbledore was able to reveal to the public was that you were safe and well cared for. So I think it is going to be a while before everyone gets used to you suddenly being in public again after so long."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, but finally shrugged and said, "Well, anyway. It must be pretty nice to have two older brothers though. I have always kind of wished I had some siblings."

Ron stared at him like he was insane, then said, "Fred and George? They are horrible...always pranking me for no reason." He then seemed to get more depressed as he continued, "I actually have five older brothers though. Bill and Charlie have already left Hogwarts - Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch for Gryffindor. Now Percy's a prefect. And everyone thinks Fred and George are so funny, plus they get pretty good marks too. You could say I have a lot to live up to. Everyone expects me to do just as well as them, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."

Ron reached into his jacket and pulled out a fat sleeping rat. "His name is Scabbers and he's useless. He hardly ever wakes up."

Hermione frowned indignantly at this and said, "Rats were not on the list of approved pets in the acceptance letter to Hogwarts. I don't think they are allowed."

"Well it is a magical rat," Harry responded. "So that makes it kind of cool, even if not nearly as cool as Neville's toad. And it's fine Hermione. No one cares what pets you bring as long as they are not harmful." Harry was actually fairly impressed with the level of magic he could see in the rat. It was more magic, and more complicated, than he had seen in any other animal so far.

Neville had perked up at Harry's compliment of Trevor, though the others looked at him a little oddly, and Ron responded, "Well, I don't think he is magical. Percy just found him in the garden one day...though I guess he has lived for a long time. Almost a decade, I think. I guess that is kind of long for a rat, so maybe he is a little magical." Ron seemed to brighten at that thought, though he did add, "Still doesn't change that he is sort of useless though."

Neville finally seemed to gather the courage to speak up as well. "I also have a...used wand, I guess. It is my father's old one." He pulled out a clearly somewhat worn wand, though equally clearly great care had gone into polishing and maintaining it. "My gran says that using dad's wand is a way of honoring him. So maybe you could think of it the same with your brother's wand?"

Ron shrugged, though he did seem much less depressed than earlier. "Yeah, I guess so. Just wish I had some new stuff instead."

At that point Harry changed the subject, since it was clear that talking about money would probably be a sore area for Ron regardless. So they moved onto many of the same topics covered earlier between Harry, Hermione, and Neville.

Eventually though they came to the topic of Quidditch, which wasn't something that interested Hermione or Neville. Honestly it didn't really interest Harry either. Civilian sports of any kind were decidedly boring to a shinobi. When an average Thursday consisted of going out to duel another ninja to the death in order to complete a mission because you needed some extra money for the poker game that weekend...well, throwing around a ball just didn't provide a lot of excitement even if the ninja wasn't using their physical training to give them an advantage no civilian could match.

Even if the ball in question was being thrown from brooms flying through the air far faster than any non-ninja could possibly normally move, though the ability to move in a third dimension did add a little interest to the game. Still, Ron was able to convert Harry to his favorite team, the Chudley Cannons, purely on the basis of their team colors. Any team which wore that brilliant orange couldn't help but to be awesome, regardless of if they won or not.

Which they didn't, he was informed, though Ron didn't state it outright. Ron did seem very hopeful for this year though, but Neville's incredulous look at that didn't produce a lot of confidence in Ron's opinion on the topic. Still, having his team lose didn't really bother Harry, especially in something that mattered to him as little as Quidditch. Besides, their official team motto of, "Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best" couldn't help but make Harry laugh.

Eventually Harry started looking for a way to change the topic though, since Neville and Hermione had long grown bored with Ron's ceaseless enthusiasm for Quidditch and the Cannons, and Harry was rapidly moving in that direction. Fortunately though, Harry didn't have to come up with a distraction. Someone else was kind enough to make one for him.

Malfoy, the same prat from the clothing store in Diagon Alley a month before, seemed to have been able to re-grow his hair into the same ridiculous slicked back hair-cut he wore previously. He had also obtained two fairly pathetic looking bodyguards who, if looks meant anything, were likely even less able to think for themselves than Malfoy was.

But as the three came barging into their compartment without knocking or even particularly looking around as they entered, Malfoy announced in his standard arrogant tone, "I heard that Harry Potter was on the train today. Have any of you..." He then trailed off as he looked at Harry for the first time, his expression going from haughty to furious in seconds.

"You!" He repeated. "You are the one from Madam Malkin's last month! No one knew your name when I tried to track you down. Who are you?"

"Me?" Harry answered in a too innocent voice. "Oh, my name isn't really important," he said quickly before Ron or any of the others could say anything. "I did find out that your name is Draco Malfoy, though."

Ron snickered at the name, and Harry joined him, making Malfoy even more furious. "What is wrong with my name?" He demanded. He then took a moment to look around the compartment as he continued, "Red hair, ratty clothes. You must be a Weasley. Couldn't afford anything new with all those children I suppose? And the Squib Longbottom too. And one of your mudblood friends, I suppose? Draco is an ancient name of the Malfoy family, and is worth far more than all of your names combined."

Harry just shook his head, still chuckling. "Well, I don't know about Ron, but I wasn't laughing about the Draco part of your name. That is actually kind of a cool name, if a little mini-dark wizard wannabe for my tastes. No, I was talking about the Malfoy part."

This shocked Malfoy out of his rant, at least for a moment, as confusion overtook the rage that had been building. "Malfoy? Malfoy is a noble house of ancient and pure heritage, and worth ten of even Longbottom's, much less the rest of you. And how pathetic is that, that Longbottom is the best you can find to befriend."

Harry ignored this statement for now, though the steadily growing slump of Neville's shoulders as he stared at the floor did stir the beginnings of actual anger in Harry towards this little prick. But he forced his voice to maintain the same amused detachment that aggravated Malfoy so much as he answered, "You don't even know what your own name means, do you? Well, I don't want to strain your brain making you look it up, so I will tell you. Malfoy comes from French, and basically translates into Bad Faith."

Malfoy's mouth opened and closed like a fish several times as Harry gave him a chance to think about that before Harry continued, "At some point in the past, you're oh so noble family must have lived in France and betrayed someone - probably the king at the time. They renamed you Bad Faith and drove your family from France in disgrace. That is the ancient heritage you seem so proud of. Every time you speak with such pride in your name as a Malfoy, you are proudly proclaiming that you are not to be trusted and have no honor. Perhaps it is the muggleborns who are more pure after all...at least they start with a clean slate, rather than the long history of backstabbing and traitorous dealings your family must have gained the reputation for to reach the point you were renamed to reflect it."

It was at this point that Malfoy finally overcame the shock of having someone not only talk to him in such a manner, but also dare to spit on the mighty name of Malfoy. So his wand quickly came out, followed much more slowly by those of his two apparently mute bodyguards who hadn't even seemed to understand Harry's statement. "How _dare_ you, you little commoner mudblood. My father will..."

Harry once again interrupted him, rising smoothly from his seat for the first time since Malfoy entered, though he didn't bother to take out his own wand. He was vaguely tempted to take out one of his swords from his storage seals and show Malfoy what real intimidation looked like though. It would have been overkill though. Just a touch of killing intent would be plenty for this pathetic child.

Killing intent was a strange ability. It was basically the ability for someone to focus their willpower and knowledge that they had the ability to kill the target and impose that knowledge on their enemy. This would result in an instinctive fear or even visions of the target's death flashing before their eyes if it was strong enough. It could be either directed only at a single target, or even just leaked out to an entire area, though that did reduce its intensity.

And the exact strength of killing intent was based on a comparison of two things between the user and the target - first strength of will, and second the strength of their chakra. Both of these were areas in which Harry was quite powerful, so he had tremendously intense killing intent when he wished to. Powerful enough that he could stop the heart of almost any civilian from pure terror if he unleashed it at full power and bring even most ninja to their knees.

Of course, though it utilized chakra, it was mostly based on spiritual energy, so wizards should be able to at least resist it far better than civilians. Harry guessed that a powerful wizard like Dumbledore or Voldemort could probably mostly shrug off all but his most powerful killing intent. But a young and mostly untrained wizard like Draco could be scared silent with just a small pulse of it directed at him.

"I don't care how much money or power your father has stolen over the years, Neville is worth far more than ten of a bigot and idiot like you." Harry said with contempt. "So are the rest of them. Maybe someday you will actually learn to think for yourself rather than just spit out the words your father taught you without even considering how stupid they are. Maybe someday you will learn to stand on your own feet rather than just fall back on daddy's power and his assigned bodyguards, as pathetic as they are. If you should, come back and talk to me again. Until then, stay out of my way. And get out."

With that, he sent another small flare of killing intent targeted at Malfoy and to a lesser degree his two goons which had them backing away quickly with bloodless faces. Though Malfoy did manage a stuttered out "My father will hear about this," as he fled the compartment.

Harry didn't bother to keep his laugh quiet as he yelled back, "Sure, then everyone can know how powerless you really are when even he doesn't do anything as revenge for you not being able to take an insult."

Malfoy slammed the door closed behind him and sent Harry a combined look of both fear and anger before storming off. Harry just kept laughing at the idiot.

The other three in the compartment were looking at him with mouths agape and awed expressions on their faces. Especially Neville, who looked like he might be coming down with a case of hero worship. Harry thought he must have been the first person to truly defend him like that before, and given Neville's responses to Malfoy's taunts, it certainly hadn't been the first time such things had been said about him. Well, hopefully he could become Neville's friend and help him in that way, rather than as some hero to be looked up to. Harry was pretty good at making people aggravated with him to the extent that they didn't idolize him anymore though, so hopefully it wouldn't be a major issue.

With a hesitant, but growing in strength voice, Ron said, "Harry...wow. That was...that was _awesome_. I don't think anyone has ever talked to a Malfoy like that! I bet my dad would have given a week's pay to see that!"

Harry just turned back to them and gave a smile as he shrugged. "Well...I ran into him on Diagon Alley a month ago, and he was pretty annoying. Then he just walks into here and starts insulting everyone for no reason again? I'm not going to put up with that, and you shouldn't have to either.

The others all grinned at him and nodded before Hermione spoke up. "I'm kind of surprised he was talking about you like that though. I mean...you are the boy-who-lived. Why would he come in here and immediately start insulting you?"

"Well, he doesn't know who I am, I don't think." Harry replied. "We never actually got to the point that we introduced ourselves when he asked me about Quidditch, and he made the assumption I was a muggleborn from my answer." Harry shrugged while everyone looked at him with slightly confused expressions.

Thankfully, before they could ask more questions, there was another interruption, though this time it was a polite knock on the door of their compartment and a kindly question of, "Anything off the cart, dears?" from a friendly looking woman with dimples as she smiled at them.

Harry ignored Ron's blush and mutter about having brought food, as well as Hermione's comment that candy wasn't very healthy. Instead, he walked up to the cart and looked over the wide variety of treats. It was only then that Harry realized he had never tried any Wizarding candy, which was clearly very different from the muggle kind.

So he took a few of everything that looked remotely interesting, quickly paid for it from the small amount of coins he kept in his pockets, and returned to his seat, spreading everything out in the open space beside him.

"Feel free to try whatever you want." Harry said as he looked around at his new friends with a grin.

And so the group spent the rest of the long train trip through the British countryside eating strange magical candy - even Hermione, after a fair bit of prodding, and talking about their future at Hogwarts.

**A/N:**

I don't like Ron. I just don't. He isn't evil, but he has almost no good traits, and a huge pile of annoying ones. However, one thing I do not like in fanfiction is how people who don't intend to make Ron a member of the standard Golden Trio inevitably have Harry immediately hate Ron when they first meet on the Hogwarts train. Ron doesn't really do anything to deserve hate that early. Yeah, wanting to see his scar might be described as slightly annoying, but that's the worst that could be said. So having Harry hate him that early makes him come across as unreasonable, or just immediately puts the fic in the category of 'Weasley bashing fic'.

This will not be a bashing fic. There are some characters that I don't like, but I will try and keep them in character. Some might go to slightly more extreme lengths than they did in canon (all three of Dumbledore, Snape, and Ron to varying degrees), but that will be because Harry's actions will drive them to be more extreme. Not because I hated them in canon and want Harry to be able to do terrible things to them without coming across as the bad guy. So Harry will eventually come to dislike Ron, but only when he gives Harry actual cause to do so.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	7. To Hogwarts

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thank you once again to those who reviewed.

**Chapter 7: To Hogwarts**

When Harry had first learned that all of the children attending Hogwarts went directly to King's Cross Station in London, then took a train to Hogwarts, he had been incredulous. Even for those who lived in London, it was an agonizingly inconvenient process, given the existence of multiple nearly instantaneous methods of magical travel.

Add in those students who lived closer to Hogwarts than London, and it was even worse. In fact, as the only fully magical village, there would on average be more students coming from Hogsmeade itself than from any other single location in Britain. So those students would travel from Hogsmeade to London, then spend most of the day travelling by train all the way back to end up where they left that morning.

But after actually taking the train, Harry began to understand how such a seemingly insane tradition came into being. It was the perfect situation to allow the new students to bond. Create the beginnings of what would be important friendships for years, hopefully anyway. Or to renew such friendships for returning students, he supposed.

So as the train finally came to a stop in Hogsmeade Village, long after dark, Harry was still laughing with his new friends as they wandered out of the train and towards Hogwarts. All of them could do with some maturing in various ways, but that was to be expected, given their ages. Harry was just trying to live a real childhood, something he never had as Naruto, so he tried his best to not let Hermione's pushiness, Neville's excessive shyness, or Ron's overly brash and occasionally abrasive manner bother him, but it was a work in progress.

"Firs' years! Firs' years over here! All right there, Harry?" Hagrid's booming voice interrupted his thoughts.

Harry grinned and dragged his new friends over towards the huge man. "Hey Hagrid! Doing well, how are you? Oh, this is Hermione, Ron, and Neville. They're first years like me."

Each of them greeted the man with various levels of wide-eyed shock. Hagrid quickly nodded towards them, then said, "Good tah meet all of yeh. Have to talk later though. For now jus' follow me down to the lake." He then raised his already naturally loud voice to its previous truly booming level as he yelled out once more time, "All right. Firs' years, follow me. Come on firs' years."

He led the group of first years away from the rest of the students and down a fairly steeply sloping path from the small train platform with only Hagrid's tiny lantern to light the way. Or at least it seemed tiny in the man's huge hand, and didn't supply nearly enough light for most of the children to see the rocky ground. Of course Harry could see fine in anything short of absolute darkness, but he did have to catch the others a few times - especially Neville, who was a little on the clumsy side.

But that wasn't what he was putting most of his attention to. No, it was the two men under some kind of invisibility spell hiding in the bushes off to the side of the path. Though actually, as they got closer, Harry could tell that it wasn't really an invisibility spell directly on the men, but rather that they were under some kind of object with the invisibility spell on it. A cloak, most likely, from what Harry could tell about the origins of the magic he could see with his Sharingan.

But what concerned him even more than two men apparently in hiding for a group of small children was that they started sending some kind of subtle spell at each of the first years as they went past. They had ignored Hagrid though, which seemed to indicate it wasn't immediately harmful magic, at least. If they were going for an outright attack, they certainly would have targeted the obvious threat of Hagrid first. Instead they were just going for the children. Strange.

So Harry just watched as several of the students ahead of him were hit. They didn't seem to notice anything, or exhibit any reaction at all to whatever the spell was. And Harry couldn't tell what it was doing, either. It was far too complicated for Harry's limited knowledge of magic. If he had to guess, he would say this was the Trace spell for tracking underaged magic he had read was placed on all eleven year olds before they started learning magic. But one thing he did know was that regardless of what it did, he wasn't going to allow it to take hold of him.

Because _whatever_ it did, it was connecting directly with each of the student's chakra coils. Or 'magical core', as they called it now. He had no idea why it would do that, but he had seen it happen once before. To himself, to be precise. At some point _before_ his souls had joined, some sort of monstrously complex magical spell had established itself, linking directly into his chakra coils. To this day, he had no idea what the thing was or what it did, but it was probably over one hundred times as complicated and powerful as whatever those two men were casting.

So of course Harry had moved it. He had wanted to destroy it outright, but he had been pretty sure that at least part of the spell included some sort of link to some other spell elsewhere. So damaging the spell might have informed someone that something was wrong. So instead he just moved it over into his cousin Dudley. Of course Dudley's chakra coils were an incredibly pathetic thing, but that didn't seem to matter. The spell didn't actually draw any magic, or at least not in its standard passive state. It just needed to be connected to the chakra coils.

And Dudley's coils worked for that, pathetic barely there things or not. Based on reading his introduction to magic book, he was pretty sure Dudley qualified as what they called a Squib, as did Aunt Petunia. Unlike most people, they did have excess spiritual energy...just not enough to actually power even the weakest of spells.

The moving of the spell had been ridiculously difficult though. It had taken him _six months_ to figure out how, carefully pry the thing away from where it was partially merged with his chakra coils, and gently shift the thing into Dudley. He refused to go through that again. Granted, it would be significantly faster with this new spell, given his experience and this one's lesser complexity. But it still wasn't something he wanted to go through again, so he just tore the spell apart with his chakra as it approached him, and did the same for those aimed at Hermione, Ron, and Neville while he was at it.

The people hiding didn't seem to notice anything was wrong, so he just gave a tiny shrug and continued down the path to where a group of small boats were tied up at the edge of a large lake. But there were much more impressive things to see than the boats, because Hogwarts itself came into view just as they came around the final bend in the path.

Harry gasped along with everyone else as they fell silent and stared on wonder. Though he would guess that his gasp was for a very different reason. The architecture, landscaping, and view of the castle were nothing particularly spectacular to Harry. He had seen plenty of sights that equaled or surpassed Hogwarts in that regard. He could probably make its equal himself in a day or so between a lot of clones and even more earth manipulation.

No, what shocked Harry was the amount of Natural Energy running through the area around Hogwarts, and in fact through the castle itself. Mount Myoboku was the only place he had ever seen with an equal level of Natural Energy. Even from where Harry was standing, he could tell that the levels were elevated beyond the normal amounts, but the amounts running through the castle itself were truly incredible.

But Harry forced himself to shake off his awe after a few moments as he turned to Ron, having realized the red-headed boy said something while he was distracted. "What was that Ron?"

"Oh, I said it was pretty incredible, isn't it mate?" Ron responded.

Harry just nodded as he stared for a few more seconds. This would be something he would have to look into more carefully. That level of Natural Energy had to be important in some way, and might make some of Harry's projects easier as well. The most important of which would be making another attempt to contact the Toads from here. His earlier attempts over the years since his souls joined had all been met with total failure, and he had no idea why. Hopefully he would have greater success from an area of such rich Natural Energy.

He could consider that and other possible uses for this much Natural Energy later though. "Yeah, it's pretty amazing," he answered Ron. "Anyway, come on. Let's grab a boat."

"No more'n four to a boat." Hagrid yelled out as the group slowly approached the waiting boats. Harry quickly claimed one of them and helped the other three carefully climb in without tipping the thing over.

"Everyone in?" Shouted Hagrid, who had claimed one boat to himself, and even then almost dropped the edge below the water level from his weight. Upon seeing that everyone had settled into at least reasonably safe positions, he yelled out, "All right then. Forward!"

The trip across was not particularly fast and the surface of the lake was as smooth as glass. Not to mention that the students were mostly silent as they looked up at the castle. So of course Harry was pretty bored.

Harry could fix that though. So he looked over to Malfoy's boat briefly and put a band of thickened air around one of Malfoy's bodyguards. Harry didn't even know which one, but it didn't matter as he forced the boy's arm to jerk up and blatantly shove Malfoy out of the boat and into the water.

It was probably just an excuse at this point, but he had seen Malfoy looking down his nose as he refused some girl who had asked to join Malfoy and his two goons in their boat. Was it petty? Sure. Was it immature? Almost certainly. Was it small minded? Probably, yes...He was sure he had been going somewhere with this at some point. Oh well. It was funny, which was mostly what Harry cared about.

And most of the other students seemed to agree, as most were at least snickering as Malfoy floundered in the water and yelled for help. Even Hagrid's beard seemed to twitch as if he was trying to repress his smile as he grabbed the back of Malfoy's dripping robes and dropped the soaked boy back into his boat.

"You all right there?" Hagrid asked Malfoy with at least a little genuine concern. Upon receiving a hesitant and still shocked nod, Hagrid turned to the boy who had 'shoved' him. "Gregory Goyle. I haven't seen somethin' like that in all my years take'n the firs' years cross the lake. I'll speak to your Head of House once yeh get one, yeh can believe that. Yeh do it again, an' I might jus' have yeh swim the rest of the way too."

This was enough to bring Malfoy out of his shock, and the boy began to shriek in a rather unpleasantly high-pitched voice something about how Goyle could dare to do something like that, and of course how his father would hear about it. This brought the other boy out of his own shock as he began to hesitantly try to explain that he hasn't meant to, or something along those lines. It was mostly lost in Malfoy's much angrier and shriller diatribe, and Harry wasn't really paying attention to their words anyway. Malfoy's limply hanging hair that was once so carefully coifed and equally soaked expensive silk robes were just too amusing.

* * *

><p>After landing the boats and walking up a path to Hogwarts, Hagrid knocked on a very solid wooden door and handed off the first years to a very stern looking woman who was introduced as Professor McGonagall. McGonagall then escorted them all into the huge entrance hall and gave a welcome to Hogwarts along with a spectacularly uninformative introduction to the Sorting and the Houses which effectively did nothing more than name the Houses. Her suggestion that they 'smarten themselves up' while staring at Malfoy's imitation of a soaked cat was pretty funny though.<p>

She then left the group of first years alone in the entrance hall as she entered through the door opposite the one the group had entered the castle through. A few of the students started to nervously chatter among themselves, mostly over conjecture about what the Sorting Ceremony would be. Harry wasn't concerned though, so he decided to use this time to see more of the castle. Not waiting any longer, he switched his eyes from their current Sharingan to the Byakugan.

The Byakugan was one of the three eye based bloodlines he had taken during his life as Naruto, and the last he had obtained. It had been the only one of the three he had gotten after the Fourth Great Shinobi World War, in fact. Hiashi Hyuuga really should have known better than to try and organize an assassination attempt against him though. After Hiashi had stepped down in favor of his daughter Hinata taking over as the clan head of the Hyuuga, he and the rest of the Hyuuga elders had objected rather strongly against Hinata abolishing the Caged Bird Seal on the Branch family of the Hyuuga.

Of course neither he nor Hinata particularly cared what that group of useless old men thought, so they had gone ahead with it. Naruto had actually empathized with Hiashi's position to some extent, as the rest of the elders had been in favor of assassinating Hinata rather than him. Hiashi had pushed for Naruto's death as the only living sealmaster skilled enough to remove the Caged Bird Seal rather than trying to kill Hinata, which Naruto appreciated. Still, he couldn't let the attempted assassination of their own Hokage go, so he had to execute all of the elders, including using his bloodline theft seal to take the strongest of the Elder's Byakugans - that of Hiashi Hyuuga.

Though as much as him having to execute Hinata's father had bothered him at the time, he did have to admit that there being no surviving Hyuuga elders had greatly simplified her job of running and modernizing the Hyuuga clan.

He sometimes debated if he should have bothered with obtaining the Byakugan though. The Byakugan granted the ability to see with 360 degree vision, see through solid objects, and see long distances - up to about ten miles for him, though he had never approached the mastery Hinata had eventually achieved with the Byakugan. All of these things were useful, but rarely more useful than the abilities of either the Sharingan or the Rinnegan, so he rarely activated this particular eye.

But he did now, and he immediately regretted it.

Whoever had built Hogwarts was as insane as they were brilliant. The spatial distortion which had gone into the building was beyond incredible. Everywhere the space of rooms and hallways had been expanded or otherwise distorted, leaving something that made an Escher painting seem downright childish. Space overlapped and passed through itself in ways that should have been impossible. Straight hallways that should have crossed each other instead passed above or below each other. Full sized rooms filled the space within a single wall or even the _same _space as other rooms. Things impossible in three dimensions layered on top of each other in impossible ways, and all of this his Byakugan eyes tried to take in and make sense of in the span of a single second.

Worse, he had switched to them with a fair amount of chakra flowing to his eyes, which meant he saw everything around him for miles all at once, rather than a much smaller few hundred feet with the minimum chakra needed to activate the eyes. This normally wasn't much of a problem. He had trained himself to be able to take in enormous amounts of visual information extremely quickly, but this was just too much. As his eyes tried to sort out what he was seeing, a spike of agony was sent straight into his brain as Harry desperately cut off all chakra flow to his eyes before he passed out.

He was hardly surprised to find himself on the floor as he slowly regained his bearings. The blood dripping from his eyes as was a bit of a shock though. He knew that the Sharingan could produce that bleeding from the eyes effect when they were pushed beyond their capacity, but it had never happened with the Byakugan that he was aware of. The various screams and yells of the surrounding children probably should have been expected too, though with his sudden migraine, they were not particularly appreciated.

"Harry! Harry, are you all right?" He managed to discern Hermione's frantic yelling from all the others, so he slowly nodded to her and pushed himself upright off of the ground into a sitting position.

"Yeah...Sorry about that. That was weird." Harry carefully wiped away the blood running down his cheeks and pushed himself back to his feet. At the moment his eyes had taken enough damage that anyone else would have been blind, and his headache, if it could be called that, was severe enough most would be unconscious. It was hardly the first time something like that had happened to him though, even in this lifetime.

And the healing provided by his own bloodline, accelerated by the power of the Juubi flowing through him should fix that up within the next couple hours. Unfortunately, damage to his eyes always healed the slowest, given their enormous complexity between all three of his eye based bloodlines. He could regrow limbs faster than he could heal even moderate damage to his eyes. Yet another reason to sometimes regret the inclusion of the Byakugan, since it slowed that process further for relatively little gain.

But until then, the blurry shapes around him wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Anyone trained to fight blind could maneuver through a world that was merely dim and fuzzy without trouble. And his impressive levels of pain tolerance could handle the rest.

Even Hermione's shrieking, which sent enough pain lancing from his ears that he used chakra to lessen his sense of hearing for the time being. "WEIRD? You passed out and started BLEEDING OUT OF YOUR EYES. We need to get you to a doctor!"

Harry, now upright and as composed as ever, though his robes were slightly wrinkled now, gave his best rakish grin as he responded, "Yeah, but I'm fine now. Oh look. Ghosts." He pointed casually at the floating specters which had approached the group while they all stared at Harry.

This distracted people enough to take their focus away from Harry at least for the moment. There were even quite a few more screams, which surprised Harry. For at least those who grew up in the magical world, ghosts shouldn't be particularly frightening. Just from reading his introduction to the magical world book, Harry knew that Hogwarts was apparently crawling with the things, and they were not exactly uncommon in other magical areas either.

So Harry just let their words pass over him as he focused on his slowly healing eyes and clearing headache until McGonagall returned. Fortunately his vision did clear up at least enough to briefly activate his Rinnegan with the ghosts still in view, even if they were a bit blurry.

Ever since he read about ghosts, he had been quite curious. The Rinnegan could actually see souls, among other things, but he hadn't been sure if the 'ghosts' he read about in his introduction to magic book were truly the souls of the dead somehow barred from continuing onto the afterlife or something else.

It turned out after a brief examination with the Rinnegan that they were 'something else'. There were no actual souls there, just a complicated and confusing mass of magic. In fact it was rather similar to the magic he had seen on some of the moving paintings along the walls of Hogwarts, though significantly less structured.

Which probably meant it was just some sort of accidental magic spell released as a witch or wizard desperately tried to use their magic to preserve their lives when they were dying. Or possibly even just some natural effect in areas of high concentrations of Natural Energy when the excess spiritual energy witches and wizards had was released on their death.

Harry wasn't really sure, and honestly didn't care much. Either way it meant they were a magical structure which contained at least some of the memories of the person who died. What he was interested in is if he could force the effect to take place with a living person and if he could access the memories stored within a ghost. Currently his most effective method of information gathering was to literally rip someone's soul out with the power of the Rinnegan and absorb the knowledge of that person. Which killed them, obviously.

And that was unfortunate. There had been far too many times he wanted to get at someone's knowledge without actually killing them. This seemed a likely avenue to do so. It would also be a much faster and easier method of learning magic while he was at it, though that would likely make his classes at Hogwarts even more boring than they were already going to be. So he was hesitant, but still interested in at least having the option.

"Move along now," McGonagall stated in her standard humorless voice and slightly pinched expression as she once again emerged from the Great Hall, this time leaving the door behind her open. That woman was far too uptight to be the Head of Gryffindor as he had heard she was. Gryffindor was supposed to be almost as famous for its pranksters and parties as it was for its members being stupidly brave. 'Excessive sternness' was always a terrible method of dealing with such things. Especially among those brave enough to ignore the warnings of teachers.

If he got his wish to be in her house, by the time he was done with this school she would be forced to either loosen up or possibly have a psychotic break. Hopefully it would be the first. People always got annoyed when he caused psychotic breaks. He had only caused one in the past decade though, which was pretty good for him. He was sure Sakura would have been proud. Or some approximation of proud, at least. The kind of proud that came with beatings...Sometimes he wondered why he missed Sakura so much.

"The Sorting Ceremony's about to start," McGonagall continued, hopefully without any idea of what Harry was currently thinking. "Now form a line and follow me."

As they walked towards the door McGonagall had opened, Hermione guided Harry's elbow and whispered to him once again, "Are you sure you are alright Harry?"

Secretly Harry was thankful for her assistance, but he made sure he didn't put any weight on Hermione's grasp. He did stop sending chakra to his eyes to keep his Rinnegan active though. His eyes would heal more quickly if none of his eye bloodlines were activated. Not that anyone else could tell the difference behind the seals and illusions hiding anything odd about his eyes.

"Yeah," he whispered back. "I'm fine now. I can talk to the nurse later if you want, but I don't want to miss the Sorting. Besides, the nurse is probably in there with everyone else anyway. If I do collapse again, she can help me there better than me going to an empty nurse's office would. I'm really fine though."

In fact, he wouldn't be going to talk to the nurse, now or ever. He had no idea what magical detection methods magical healers had available, but there were concrete differences between his body and that of a normal eleven year old which would be almost impossible to hide. Putting an illusion over his eyes so that what was really a blood red iris with rotating black geometric shapes looked like their normal bright green was one thing. If they had a spell which actually gave a detailed analysis of the composition and makeup of his eyes, even if they were inactive, his eyes would show as incredibly different from anything normally found in a human - wizard or otherwise.

And the rest of his body wasn't a lot better. Having chakra constantly flowing through his muscles and bones caused them to be slightly denser and actually structured a little differently. Again, it wasn't something that could be detected by an external view, but any detailed medical scan would detect it. And that wasn't even considering if they could do genetic scans. With all his bloodlines and some additional mutations because of the power of the Juubi flowing through him, he wasn't even sure if he technically qualified as _human_.

He had once allowed Sakura to do a detailed medical analysis of him, and immediately had the thing destroyed. It had been an interesting read even for him though, and he would never be called anything remotely approaching a medical specialist. He had no desire for anyone to have similar knowledge of his physical makeup any time soon.

But Hermione hesitantly nodded and accepted Harry's explanation, with Neville seemed concerned as well. Though Ron appeared to have taken his reassurance at face value and was just looking around the room with interest. Fortunately, as they entered the Great Hall, even Hermione's attention was taken away from Harry and to the ceiling, which appeared to have been spelled to be transparent and allow a clear view of the night sky.

It was probably more interesting to the others, but for Harry, it seemed that Hogwarts was the only place on Earth that he _couldn't_ see through the ceiling whenever he wanted. Hermione certainly seemed impressed though, as she whispered informatively, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in _Hogwarts, A History_."

But Harry was just glad to have any distraction from his own condition as he continued to gather himself and rapidly heal. And fortunately, once in the Great Hall, what looked like an old and tattered hat provided further distraction as it sang a long and fairly ridiculous song which gave no information at all that Harry didn't already know, besides that the hat itself would apparently be doing the Sorting.

That was new, even for him though. A sentient hat whose sole purpose appeared to be to sort children once a year. Which seemed kind of pointless upon further thought. Of course he knew how to make sentient objects with seals, but he had never bothered much. There had been a brief period in which some of his children had gone a little overboard with making sentient weapons after he taught them how. His opinion that it was never worth it because the things were mostly just annoying rather than useful had eventually been proven correct though.

It would be interesting to see if this Sorting Hat was any more useful than his own attempts at sentient creations. Harry was betting no.

**A/N:**

Sorry this is a bit on the short side...I figured a somewhat short chapter now was better than a slightly longer chapter in a week or two. I will try and get the next chapter out a little more quickly than usual to make up for it.

For the Trace, as far as I am aware, we don't know exactly when it is placed. But we do know it happens at some point after their arrival at Hogwarts, because Hermione was using magic before school started with no consequences. Which seems stupid, actually...what muggleborn _isn't_ going to try out a few of the spells from their new spellbooks as soon as they get them, and that is the point at which they are most likely to cause problems, what with having absolutely no training of any kind. What they should do is hold people's wands until they arrive at Hogwarts. Of course that would be expecting wizards to be logical, so I don't know why I bother.

Anyway, in this story, this is when the Trace is placed, and yes, Harry prevented the Trace from hitting him. And in case people missed it, he doesn't have his blood wards either. Being paranoid about unknown magic directly affecting him isn't always a good thing.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	8. The Useless Hat

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thank you once again to those who read and especially to those who reviewed. Over 100k views in seven chapters! Actually over 113k. I am amazed.

**Chapter 8: The Useless Hat**

Once the Sorting Hat's song was complete, McGonagall began reading out each of the student's names, calling them up to sit on the stool and have the hat placed on their head, after which it would call out what house they were supposed to go into. Harry still had no idea _how_ it was deciding which house, but it didn't really matter to him. If the hat wanted to dig through his head, it was going to fail. He had already seen many things magic might do better than chakra, but for pure brute force, chakra was simply much more powerful. And brute force that magic simply could not supply was what it would take to break through his mental defenses.

He did make sure to memorize the names of each of his fellow first years and what House they went into for future reference though. For now, the only ones he really cared about were Hermione, then Neville, both of whom got sorted into Gryffindor, though both took longer than most of the other Sortings.

"Potter, Harry," McGonagall called. Finally, it was his turn, and the rest of the Hall fell silent in a way that they had not for any other name. Likely each was just now noticing his scar now that they knew to look for it on him. So Harry took these few moments of total silence to stride forward confidently towards the front of the Great Hall, which set off a wave of whispers rushing through the Great Hall.

Harry just ignored it though. He was far too used to people whispering about him. Sometimes good things, sometimes terrible. It had taken quite a few years, but he had eventually gotten to the point that he just let it wash over him and barely even noticed. The only opinion that mattered to him now was that of his friends.

So finally he reached the stool and sat down gracefully as McGonagall placed the Hat over his head, allowing it to drop down over his eyes to rest on his nose.

A long moment of silence passed before the hat stated, "If you could lower your Occlumency barriers, that would be very helpful Mr. Potter."

The wave of whispers which had just barely finished dying down once more swept through the Great Hall at this pronouncement, with those students close enough to hear likely passing the words on to those further away. But Harry remained calm and responded with a firm voice, "I have no idea what Occlumency barriers are."

Technically he was lying. Although he had never heard the term 'Occlumency' before, given the context, he could assume the Hat was trying to poke around in his brain and had come up against the mindwalking shields Ino taught him to create so long ago. Harry was fine with the Hat and everyone else making whatever assumptions they wanted though.

"Hmm...Interesting. Never heard of Occlumency, you say? Could be a natural Occlumens, I suppose. Though it doesn't feel quite right. If you are lying, there is no need. Anything I learn in your head is strictly confidential and used only for the purposes of Sorting you."

Harry almost laughed, though he was able to maintain his calm mask with some difficulty. The idea of the Hat not reporting whatever interesting information it found digging around in his head was ridiculous. If it was as old as it looked and had been serving the purpose of Sorting students for the entire history of Hogwarts - about one thousand years, from what he could gather...Well, the _concept_ of a right to privacy from one's Lord didn't even _exist_ back then. Not to mention that it would be downright irresponsible to not report information on a potentially dangerous student to the Headmaster for the sake of everyone's safety. A student like him, in this case.

No, he wasn't going to be opening his mind to the Hat or anyone else anytime soon.

The concept of a 'natural Occlumens' did seem useful though. Apparently some rare people were just naturally immune to people messing with their minds? That would be a useful excuse. Though he was curious why such a thing hadn't been mentioned in his _Lost Powers_ book. It seemed like exactly the sort of unusual ability that would have fit into a book like that. He would have to look into what exactly an 'Occlumens' did at some later point.

"Umm...I'm not lying," Harry lied very sincerely. "If I have these Occlumency barriers, I don't know how to drop them." Fortunately, Harry had grown to be a rather talented liar in his lifetime as Naruto. It turned out that his overly enthusiastic happy mask he used in his childhood to draw attention had served as a strong basis in this field once he began to work on that particular area of his ninja skills shortly after the Forth Great Shinobi World War. And like everything else he practiced, he had nothing if not time to perfect his skills.

"Well, I must warn you that I am required to test you on this. We had a rash of students with Occlumency training claiming to be natural Occlumens after the first real natural Occlumens passed under my brim back in 1095, so I am required to call upon the power of Hogwarts itself to attempt to break your shields if you do not lower them now. If you are a natural Occlumens, this won't hurt you, but if you are not, it will be quite painful. And whatever shields you have created will fail, I assure you."

Harry gave a shrug and responded, "I'm not doing anything. Or if I am, I don't know how to stop. So feel free to do whatever, I guess."

Harry wasn't worried. As impressive as the Natural Energy flowing through Hogwarts was, it was no match for the power Harry contained. The last time he had done a rough calculation, including both the power of the Juubi and his own chakra, he housed roughly as much energy as a quarter of the entire planet's Natural Energy.

The energy, highly concentrated or not, of one small valley was nothing in comparison. Granted, the majority of the total power contained within him was the Juubi's, and it would be _bad_ if he had to start pulling on that chakra since using more than insignificant amounts of the Juubi's chakra had an immediate visible effect. Not to mention the inherent evil and corruption within the Juubi's chakra which even magic users would be able to sense if he started channeling significant amounts of it. He really didn't need questions about that coming up this early.

It didn't end up being a problem though. The Hat's attempts to invade his mind had started as a scalpel trying to cut away his shields. Unfortunately scalpels were not particularly effective against what was the mental equivalent of a fifty foot thick wall of steel. Adding the power of Hogwarts to the attempt was a little like putting that scalpel onto the front of a tank and driving it full speed into the wall. Impressive, but still totally ineffective.

Finally the hat gave a long sigh and stated, "Very well, Mr. Potter. I cannot Sort you. The standard method of Sorting natural Occlumens is to have a meeting with the Heads of the Houses to discuss what House you would best fit."

"Just put me in Gryffindor, please." Harry responded politely but firmly.

There was a short pause before the Hat answered, "I cannot sort you, Mr. Potter. I cannot get past the barriers in your mind, even with the power of the Hogwarts supporting me."

Harry shrugged casually. "So what? You seem to just put everyone else either wherever they want to go or where their parents went anyway. I know Hermione Granger seemed more suited to Ravenclaw, but she wanted Gryffindor, so that is where you put her. Draco Malfoy is, as far as I can tell, totally lacking in cunning with his only ambition to be exactly like his father, but you didn't even get all the way onto his head before you were saying Slytherin. Likely simply because he was mentally shouting that was where he wanted to go." He glanced over at Malfoy, waiting to see if he would get another 'wait until my father hears about this', but the boy still seemed rather pale and in shock that the 'mudblood' he had made enemies with so quickly was Harry Potter. Harry doubted Malfoy's father would be pleased to hear _that_.

So Harry just continued, "And Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe? Those two are either the craftiest buggers to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts as they hide their intelligence behind incredibly realistic masks of being stupid followers...Or, much more likely, they actually _are_ just stupid followers and have no business being in Slytherin. For that matter, _no one_ who was actually clever enough to warrant Slytherin would want to announce to the world how cunning they are, so the fact that_ anyone_ who actually expresses a desire to be in Slytherin actually gets in proves you just put people wherever they want to go. Though I am confused as to why anyone would _want_ to go into a House widely believed to be filled with untrustworthy dark wizards anyway. I would think that untrustworthy dark wizards would want to go there least of all."

The Hat made a sound as if it was clearing its throat among the snickers and outright laughter moving through the students and the stern frowns on the faces of the professors. "Well, the kind of person someone wants to be does contribute to who they will become, as does how their parents raised them...But I do have to see into your mind to make sure that the traits of your desired House do exist or I won't put you there, no. So as I said, I cannot sort you. You will have to speak to the Heads of Houses and try and convince them that Gryffindor is the House for you."

Harry shrugged yet again and lifted the Hat off his head and handed it back to McGonagall. "So when do we meet to decide my House, Professor?" Harry asked the woman.

She glanced up to Dumbledore with an uncertain expression, but eventually looked back at Harry and replied, "Why don't you sit with Gryffindor for now, and we can meet after the feast to determine your permanent House.

Harry grinned and walked over to sit between Hermione and Neville as the Gryffindors gave a hesitant and uncertain applause.

"You shouldn't say things like that about the Sorting Hat Harry." Hermione whispered reproachfully at him. "It is an ancient artifact that has been Sorting for a thousand years."

Harry laughed loudly enough to draw some questioning looks and replied, "Eh...Maybe it has gotten senile in all those centuries of Sorting. Or more likely all those centuries of sitting on a shelf somewhere with nothing to do 364 days out of the year." He quickly cut off her objection as he continued, "But I just wanted to be in the House with my friends, so I said whatever I needed to convince it."

Another lie, but it was one that made Hermione end her attempts to argue as she blushed brightly and quietly muttered, "Friends?" as much to herself as to Harry. In actuality, he wasn't the sort that would allow what House he was in to come between him and his friends regardless, so that hadn't really been a part of his reasoning at all.

Given his personality, he would probably fit within any of Slytherin, Gryffindor, or Hufflepuff. Slytherin was out for exactly the reason he had verbally given the Hat. Plus the fact that the rate of Slytherin fatalities would probably eventually hover around fifty percent if he had to actually share a dorm with those idiots. Hufflepuff...Well, honestly loyalty was probably his most treasured trait. But he also didn't want to spend seven years explaining to people that he only worked hard on things that mattered, and that school essays didn't. He doubted that would go over well with the Puffs. Which left Gryffindor. And he certainly had plenty of the suicidal bravery Gryffindor was known for, so he should fit best here. Besides, from what he heard, they had the best parties.

But Harry didn't allow any of these thoughts to show on his face as he nodded to Hermione and smiled brightly. "Yeah, of course we're friends." He then turned back to watch the rest of the sorting.

A few minutes later, Ron also got sorted to Gryffindor to especially loud cheers from Harry and Ron's numerous brothers, followed by Blaise Zabini going into Slytherin to end the Sorting Ceremony.

Dumbledore then stood up in front of the gathered students, his arms raised wide and a bright smile visible behind his impressive beard.

"Welcome!" He said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blobber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

He then sat back down and huge piles of food appeared in front of them on the table. Harry honestly wasn't sure what to think. Headmaster Dumbledore seemed like a lot of fun, and the feast was fairly impressive...But there was no ramen. How could they call something a feast if there was no ramen? Harry felt like he should object, but he was fairly certain it wouldn't accomplish anything.

So he was left a bit more morose than the circumstances would normally called for, but he did eat his fill and casually chatted with Hermione, Neville, and Ron. Though Ron's table manners were a little on the disgusting side, so Harry tried not to ask him questions, since he consistently didn't bother to stop and swallow before he answered. Harry couldn't really object though, since his table manners had been just as poor the first time he had been eleven. Though at least he had the excuse of not having parents to teach him any better...

But regardless, the meal passed in comfortable chatter and good food. Though not the _best _food, as Harry was constantly reminded. They did have Treacle Tarts among the desserts though, which Harry had found to be _almost_ as good as ramen. And the pumpkin juice tasted basically like a liquid version of pumpkin pie and was _far_ better than it sounded.

He also got the questionable treat of being horrified by Neville's family as well. Apparently they used to try and _almost_ kill him fairly regularly to try and force his magic out. Because apparently it was better for him to be _dead_ than not have magic in that family. Worse, the people around him were treating that as fairly ordinary. Harry would have to speak to him later in private about it...No child should have to feel worthless if they didn't have a single trait that they had no control over. That actually might be the root of much of Neville's problems, actually.

And so, a meal filled with mixed reactions finally came to an end, and the remains of the desserts disappeared as Dumbledore stood once more.

"Ahem - just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered." Dumbledore said with his apparently standard wide smile. "I have a few start-of term notices to give you. First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well."

Dumbledore's grin and oddly twinkling eyes turned to face the Gryffindor table at those words. Specifically at the Weasley twins from what Harry could tell. They would probably be a good resource to get some tips on what sorts of interesting things could be found in this Forbidden Forest before he went exploring there.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors. Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Harry was excited once again. Dumbledore continued on with a few more comments and leading in the Hogwarts song, if it could be called that. But even that hideously awful thing with everyone singing to different tunes didn't significant distract Harry. He was still focused on one thing.

Hogwarts sounded much more interesting than the introduction to magic book had made it sound. Calling Hogwarts 'The Safest Place in Britain' had made him question if he should attend. In his experience, when people said 'safe', what they really meant was 'boring'. But that third-floor corridor thing sounded _awesome_. He would have to check that out tonight.

* * *

><p>Albus Dumbledore was not pleased. Not pleased at all. Things were <em>not<em> going according to plan.

He had already gotten a strong indication that something had gone very wrong in his plans for Harry Potter based on Hagrid's report. But Hagrid wasn't exactly the most observant sort, so he had hoped what Hagrid had indicated was a result of the man looking for what he had hoped to see in Harry. A strong, confident, happy, and magically powerful young boy, pleased to be introduced to the magical world - both excited by many topics Hagrid also found fascinating and fully willing to accept the half-giant as so many in the magical world were not.

That _shouldn't_ have been what Hagrid actually found. Albus had carefully examined the minds of the Dursleys before he left Harry there, not to mention Minvera's comments about them. They were petty, bigoted fools afraid of magic and bitterly jealous of anything related to Lily. Of course he hadn't wanted Harry actually abused, and he had placed several monitoring spells into the house's wards to make sure he could catch such a thing and prevent it from going too far if it had happened. But he _had_ wanted Harry unloved.

That sort of environment...where Harry grew up safe, but with no sense of family or connection to anyone who loved him beyond vague stories of his parents...it should have left him shy, withdrawn, and terribly unprepared for the life of a celebrity that was what awaited him in the magical world. It should have left him desperate for people who would love him and open to accepting the guidance of anyone who cared for him.

Dumbledore had also spent ten years subtly encouraging a sort of mythos about the Boy-Who-Lived as a legendary figure with the intention that Harry would never be able to live up to it. He would be too nervous around groups of people to possibly fill the image people had of him, which would have left the students who actually interacted with him disappointed and ended with him isolated from most of his school-mates.

And at the same time, his name would have retained its rallying power among the masses of witches and wizards outside of Hogwarts...The people Harry never interacted with to use this influence, allowing Dumbledore to use Harry's name among those people to advance the opposition against Voldemort once again when it became necessary.

Instead, somehow, they got this very different version of Harry Potter. A boy far too confident with charisma beyond anything Dumbledore had seen in such a young child. He had never seen a child stride down to the Sorting Hat with hundreds of students watching and whispering with such grace in his movements and confidence in himself. Someone willing to so openly speak his beliefs to the Sorting Hat in front of the entire student body with no fear...Combined with his massive magical potential, if Hagrid's report of the events of Ollivander's shop meant anything, and he might really be able to live up to his legend.

Of course that wasn't automatically a bad thing. He had always meant for Harry to be a leader in the second war against Voldemort he knew was coming. But he needed to be a leader only after Albus had a chance to shape him. The dangers of someone with such magical power and so many ready to follow him going Dark were too great. The only Hogwarts student Albus had ever seen with similar potential, both in charisma and power had been a fifteen or sixteen year old Tom Riddle. And the magical world likely wouldn't survive another like him, especially since the potential Tom Riddle had once exhibited seemed to be even greater in young Harry.

And there was also the risk of the possibility of Harry being a Horcrux.

Albus had long suspected the possibility. There had been the residue of Dark magical energies around the room in which Voldemort lost his physical form which very few Dark rituals other than the creation of a Horcrux would match, and no object that could possibly be a Horcrux had been present. A fresh curse scar created with the energies of the most powerful dark spell in existence would have been a natural receptacle for such dark energies though. This was further supported by the unsettling fact that Harry was a natural Occlumens.

Of course no one knew exactly why some rare people came to be natural Occlumens, but Harry's mind attempting to constantly defend itself against a piece of another's soul might have caused such a thing. Certainly it wasn't proof, but it was additional evidence towards a very troubling conclusion.

And Harry being a natural Occlumens was sure to be a problem as well. A natural Occlumens was immune not just to Legilimency, but to _all_ forms of mental intrusion or magical manipulation. This meant that many of Albus' backup plans for Harry, should he start slipping away from the path Albus planned for the boy would be impossible.

Albus didn't use the more powerful mental spells and potions except in the most extreme of circumstances. Things like the Imperius curse, Veritaserum, Amortentia, or similar potions for other emotions were far too obvious, not to mention rather immoral. People would immediately notice the differences in behavior. But the occasional minor loyalty potion, or one that makes someone just a little more likely to open up to someone already trusted, or just a little excessively jealous of someone, or so much more. These were where the true possibilities lay. Things so subtle no one noticed they were not their natural feelings. And after a time behaving under the influence of the potions, people would almost always continue acting in that manner even after the potions were not longer given. If someone spent months feeling loyalty towards someone and acting in that manner, the weight of inertia in their actions would almost always have them continue acting that way.

Not to mention the occasional light Legilimency to read Harry's thoughts and make sure the boy wasn't having any opposed to Albus' plans. Or some minor Obliviation should he discover information he wasn't ready to handle. All of these would be impossible now. So between Harry's attitude and immunity to magical methods of manipulation, almost all avenues to make sure that Harry followed the path best for both the Wizarding World as a whole and for Harry himself were closed.

Even his tentative plans for the Mirror of Erised were completely ruined. The Mirror functioned by sending out an extremely subtle Legilimency probe that searched for the deepest desire buried deep within the observer's mind...which a natural Occlumens would likewise be totally immune to. The Mirror of Erised was just a mirror to a natural Occlumens.

It would have to be something to be considered later. For now, he had a meeting with Harry and the Heads of Houses to see what House Harry would end up in. At least he wanted to go to Gryffindor. A Slytherin Harry Potter would have been a disaster for obvious reasons, and either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw would have made things almost as difficult.

In Hufflepuff, he would have been surrounded with friends and supporters. It would have been impossible to isolate Harry and have him truly rely upon Albus' guidance. And in Ravenclaw, Harry would have been encouraged to gather as much magical knowledge as possible, which when combined with his obvious power could possibly start him upon the same paths Tom had taken all those decades ago. But with Harry's agreement, it shouldn't be difficult to convince the other Heads to allow Harry into Gryffindor. That was where everyone expected the Boy-Who-Lived to go anyway.

So after escorting Harry and the Heads of Houses to the room normally used for faculty meetings, Albus sat down and introduced the Heads of the Houses before giving Harry a grandfatherly smile. "So, Harry, my boy. You seem to have put us in a bit of a pickle. But you mentioned that you wanted to go into Gryffindor? Perhaps you could tell us a bit of why to help us decide if that is a good decision for you."

Harry quirked an eyebrow as he looked around at Albus and the four other professors, spending a moment meeting Severus' glower with a confused widening of his eyes before he finally shrugged and turned back to Albus. "Well professors, I'm sure you are already aware that my parents were both Gryffindor, which seems to be an important part of the House placement for...some reason.

"Then just going over the traits of each of the Houses I have heard from people, it just seemed that I fit with Gryffindor best. Ravenclaw I immediately disregarded. No offense professor," he said as he looked over to Filius with a nod and a lopsided smile. "But I'm not really a fan of studying for its own sake. I don't mind doing the required work, or reading something occasionally if it is really interesting, but I don't like spending a lot of my free time sitting around studying."

Filius nodded graciously and replied in his squeaky voice. "Of course, Mr. Potter. Not everyone is a good fit for my House. I hope you will find the required reading and work for my class interesting, but that is all I can ask of you."

Harry nodded back with a grin and continued, "Anyway, Slytherin was right out too. I'm a little too...err...well, blunt, I guess you could say. I don't think it would work out. Plus I heard a lot of people in that house are the children of the followers of the guy who killed my parents. Allegedly." He rolled his eyes dramatically and seemed to ignore the nervous shifting of the faculty as he continued. "I don't think we would get along."

Severus took this opportunity to snort contemptuously. "As if a _Potter_ would ever have the brains or cunning to be in the House of Slytherin anyway."

Harry just gave Severus a confused look once again before turning to Pomona. "Umm...Right. Whatever." Which just made Severus even more annoyed as Harry ignored his barb, but Harry just continued ignoring the fuming professor. "Anyway, I thought about Hufflepuff a lot, because loyalty is important. But in the end, I thought Gryffindor would be a better fit."

Harry grinned and looked around again, meeting everyone's eyes briefly except for Severus, who he continued to ignore. "I jumped off a two story building's roof once because my cousin bet me I wouldn't do it. It worked out pretty well too. He got in trouble with my Aunt for causing me to mess up the bushes I landed on." Harry waited for the chuckles to die down. "Anyway, I thought I would fit in pretty well in Gryffindor. And that's where all the friends I made on the train are too, so that is the House I would prefer."

Albus nodded, still smiling gently at Harry before turning to Minerva, giving her a chance to respond. He knew she would be in favor in honor of James and Lily even if nothing else.

"Well, I can tell you are going to be trouble just like your father," Minerva began. "But I suppose I do have the most experience dealing with such things. I think you are right that Gryffindor will be the best House for you. Do keep any trouble-making to a minimum though."

Severus snorted again, but everyone was ignoring him now. "So," Albus stated happily. "We are all agreed then? Harry will be in House Gryffindor?"

Most of the Heads nodded, but Pomona obviously wasn't so quick to give up. "Well, Mr. Potter said loyalty was also very important to him. And one of his reasons for wanting to be in Gryffindor is to be in the house with the friends he made on the train. That is obviously a very Hufflepuff attitude." She then turned to address Harry directly, "And I promise you will be able to find many new friends easily within Hufflepuff, as well as maintain friendships with any Gryffindors you wish. Hufflepuff and Gryffindor have always gotten along rather well."

Albus had to force himself not to sigh. Of course Pomona would be the one to object. Minerva would take his lead, Severus would rather cut off his own arm than accept a Potter into his House, and Filius was intelligent enough to accept that Harry didn't belong in Ravenclaw. But Pomona would truly wish Harry to go to the house she believed he would be happiest in. And she could be quite stubborn at times. She tended to focus far too much on the individual happiness of her students rather than what was best for the Wizarding World. It was most frustrating at times.

And there was likely a bit of a desire to have the Boy-Who-Lived bring prestige to the least respected of the Houses as well. Of course she would never understand just how important that lack of respect was. Groups that saw themselves as oppressed, even if just in minor or subtle ways, always looked for an influential leader to support them. And as the Leader of the Light, he was the natural choice for the almost universally Light Hufflepuffs. The Hufflepuffs which, with their hard-working mentality, formed the backbone of both the Ministry and the Wizarding economy. True, it was often not in the more visible positions of leadership, but Hufflepuff support had, in many ways, helped him push the Wizarding World in the right direction to an even greater extent than the Gryffindors.

That wasn't exactly something he could explain to Pomona as yet another reason Harry needed to go to Gryffindor though. So instead, he smiled gently at the woman and replied, "Yes indeed. Harry does seem to possess both traits of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor most strongly. A powerful combination, to be sure. But as the Sorting Hat suggested, our choices of what sort of person we want to be do have a powerful influence on who we will become. When the traits of two Houses are equal, it is our choices which define us."

Albus looked around among the other staff members for a moment before meeting Harry's gaze with a gentle smile as he continued, "I think that James and Lily Potter would be quite proud to see their child enter into Gryffindor. A proud and brave lion who yet remembers the importance of friendship, loyalty, and hard-work."

Of course bringing out the topic of James and Lily was a bit underhanded. Who could deny the wish of the people who had died to defend their child? The fact that giving an orphan, no matter how confident or self-assured, the idea that their parents would be proud of him would have Harry looking to Albus to provide guidance of what else he could do to make them proud was certainly an additional benefit.

But eventually the other Heads gave nods of agreement, and even Pomona gave a reluctant nod, though she quickly made one last comment to Harry, "Well, if you are sure Mr. Potter...I know that Hufflepuff would certainly welcome you, and that you could do very well in my House, but if you are determined to go to Gryffindor, I will not stand in your way."

Albus waited for Harry to give his silent but firm nod before stating, "Very well. As the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with the support of the Heads of each of the four Houses, I declare Harry Potter to be officially Sorted into Gryffindor House. So mote it be." He then watched with a satisfied smile as the edges of Harry's robes changed to Gryffindor colors and the Gryffindor Crest appeared over Harry's chest. And perhaps helping Harry get into his desired House would create the beginning of the trust Albus needed Harry to have in him over the coming years. All for something Albus wanted anyway. It was always best when things worked out that way.

"Alright. Why don't you take Harry to his dorm Minerva? And the rest of you can see to your students as well. I'm sorry for keeping you. Oh, but Severus. If you could stay for just a moment, I would appreciate it."

After the others filed out, a still scowling Severus Snape was left alone in the room with Albus. "So, did you get anything at all?" Albus asked quietly.

"No," Severus snarled back. "His defenses are like a wall, solid beyond anything I have ever seen before. Though from what I have read, natural Occlumens are supposed to have minds that are just impossible to find at all. As if they don't have minds at all, they are so well hidden. Not like this infinite barrier in Potter's mind."

Albus nodded thoughtfully. Of course he had tried a gentle surface Legilimency scan as well, but because of the more...antagonistic relationship which Severus could afford to create with Harry, Severus could be more direct about it. If Harry felt anything strange from Severus, he would attribute it to the strange glares the man was giving rather than an attempt at magically intruding into his mind.

"Yes, that was the indication I have gotten, but there haven't really been enough natural Occlumens through Hogwarts to know if they are all the same. There is no way he could have had a chance to study the art in the muggle world. And those defenses, whatever they are, are far beyond anything I have ever seen before. Far beyond what you or even I could hope to accomplish. A natural Occlumens is the only explanation." And it wasn't like there were a lot of natural Occlumens who developed the ability because their mind was constantly subconsciously fending off attacks from an implanted Horcrux, so it wasn't unlikely there would be some differences.

Severus snorted in derision. Again. Sometimes Albus had to wonder if all that snorting was bad for Severus' sinuses. "The _boy_ is just like his father. He is going to be a nightmare. Already causing problems on the first night."

"Now Severus," Albus replied in a placating tone. "He doesn't even really look that much like his father. His hair is much shorter and he doesn't wear glasses. Honestly, he looks much more like his mother with those eyes and his cheekbones. And clearly this wasn't his fault. He can't help that he happens to be a natural Occlumens, as inconvenient as that might be."

Severus frowned severely. "He is nothing like her. Did you see the way he was arrogantly strutting around? Showing off his scar like he was proud of the reminder of his parent's death? Arguing with a centuries old Sorting Hat as if he knows better. He outright told his teachers he isn't going to study, for Merlin's sake! He's going to be a menace just like his father, I guarantee it."

Albus just sighed in resignation. There wasn't any point in arguing with Severus on this topic. Although his unthinking antagonism towards Harry would likely be useful from time to time, it was frustrating discussing it with the normally very logical man. On this one topic, Severus was incapable of being rational and unbiased in any way. Which made him predictable, but sometimes he would prefer if Severus could just set aside his ridiculous prejudice and act towards the Greater Good regardless of his own feelings.

"All right, Severus, you can go tend to your new Slytherins," Albus said as he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the door to the room as he began to spend a few more moments in thought about the latest information on Harry.

Unfortunately, these moments of introspection were rather quickly put to an end. Severus had risen from his seat and attempted to stomp off as was usual for him when he was in one of his snits, but rather quickly ended lying on the floor instead.

"What in Merlin's name!" Severus exclaimed as he lifted himself from his sprawled position to look down at his feet. "My shoelaces are tied together! These shoes don't even _have_ shoelaces!" But his tone of shock and amazement quickly turned to fury as he looked up at Albus.

"_Potter_ did this," the potions professor growled so harshly his words were barely even perceptible. He lifted himself up to a sitting position on the floor and pulled out his wand to send a savage severing charm to cut the tied together shoelaces with enough force to scar the stone floor between his feet. And now that Albus had a chance to look at them, he agreed that it was clear they did not originally come with the shoes, though in his opinion they gave the shoes a very interesting look in spite of the lack of actual need for shoelaces. Perhaps he could get some like that.

"You see what I told you?" Severus continued in his angry diatribe, too quickly for Albus get his own words in as the man carefully clambered back to his feet. "Only the first night in Hogwarts, and already he is at it. This is just the beginning Albus. You need to rein him in now or I will do it for you."

Albus nearly groaned. He didn't need this additional aggravation, so he tried to say as soothingly as possible, "Now Severus. You know as well as I do that there is no possible way Harry could be responsible for this. He was in front of us for the entire time he was in the room and never even drew his wand. The boy doesn't even know any magic yet anyway. I'm sure it is simply a case of the Weasley twins finding out how to delay the onset of a spell over the summer and wanting to try it out as soon as possible. You know how they are."

Albus chuckled with amusement as he thought back on their frequent antics and pulled out his own wand to cast a silent _Finite_ on the shoes to restore them to their original shoestring-less state, only to rock back in his chair in shock as nothing changed.

"Now that is interesting," he said quietly as he examined the shoes more closely. In fact, it looked like the apparently very real shoelaces had somehow forced small holes through the leather of Severus' shoes as they laced themselves before tying together between the two shoes. An interesting bit of animation spellwork, whoever had performed it.

"It was Potter. I know that it was," Severus predictably responded. "I don't know how, but I know that it was him. You can't just let him get away with this!"

"Now Severus," Albus responded, audibly sighing this time. "It can't have been Harry. I'm sure the entire faculty will do their best to try and determine who the culprit was, but you cannot just assume everything is Harry's fault without any reason."

* * *

><p>Harry walked along beside McGonagall looking around at all of the paintings and suits of armor lining the walls as he thought back to his little prank on Professor Snape. It was pretty minor and rather simplistic for him, but sometimes that type of prank was a lot of fun too.<p>

Though he did prefer to see the reaction to his pranks, but this had been just a spur of the moment thing as he saw Snape glowering at him for no reason and insulting him, apparently simply for being a Potter. Perhaps the Snapes and the Potters had some sort of ancient blood feud? Wizarding Society seemed archaic enough for that sort of thing to be relatively common, so it seemed likely, given how Snape had been treating his last name as a curse.

That would likely make Potions classes a little awkward. Fortunately, Harry didn't really care about his grades. And if Snape wanted to re-start some feud Harry had never even heard of...Well, that sounded like a perfectly valid source of entertainment to him.

If Snape continued his glares and undeserved insults, Harry could always escalate to more intricate and...interesting pranks from there. Honestly, if the man had any intelligence at all, he would realize that anyone who could successfully create even so simplistic a prank with only moment's notice _directly_ _in front_ of the senior staff wasn't someone it was a good idea to annoy without cause. For some reason, he doubted it.

He had to repress his grin though. He was sure word of what had happened would make its way to McGonagall quickly enough, so it would be best if she didn't remember him having a strange mischievous grin walking away from the meeting.

Eventually, after a fairly lengthy walk mostly in silence, with the occasional comment about Hogwarts or Hogwarts rules, Professor McGonagall stopped, motioning to the painting of a rather large woman as she explained, "This is the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. It will be your home ten months of the year for the next seven years. To enter, you must give the Fat Lady a password, which will be changed regularly."

As Professor McGonagall paused at this point, Harry quickly interrupted with a confused look, "Wait...Why is there a password? As I understand it, the paintings are aware and have memory. Why can't they just remember who is in Gryffindor and allow us in? A password could easily be overheard by someone from another House."

McGonagall looked a little surprised, but also with an edge of disapproval in her expression. "A password is traditional." Harry rolled his eyes, though he didn't say anything. There had to have been a reason to start the tradition, so that answer was ultimately just avoiding of the question. Probably because she didn't know the answer. Teachers never liked appearing ignorant in front of their students. Though perhaps the eye-roll wasn't a good idea, because McGonagall's expression changed from slightly disapproving to an outright frown as she continued harshly, "The current password is Caput Draconis. Remember it."

Once the password was given, the painting nodded regally at Professor McGonagall and swung open to reveal the Gryffindor common room. Apparently those inside the common room had been waiting for them too, because it took less than a second for the Gryffindors to see Harry through the opening entrance and begin cheering. The Weasley Twins even began a chant of "We Got Harry," which was picked up by a significant portion of the rest of the crowd in the common room, though many were content with just cheering loudly.

Harry just grinned and strode into the room, waving around at everyone good-naturedly. He was still a little unhappy with being famous for something he was relatively certain his mother had been responsible for, but he was pretty used to being famous, and fame was a lot better than what he had expected coming into the Wizarding World. So he might as well make use of it until he had a chance to become famous for his own actions.

It took a couple minutes for the cheering to die down, but when it finally did, Harry yelled out, "Thank you everyone for your great welcome. I am proud to say that I was able to convince the Headmaster and the Heads of the Houses to put me into the best House at Hogwarts!" Of course this drew further cheers. There wasn't anything wrong with some occasional pandering though.

McGonagall just shook her head, though she looked to be repressing a bit of a smile now, which was certainly an improvement. Once things died down, she looked around with one of her stern gazes and said, "Alright. That's enough of that. It's about time all of you went off to bed. Classes start tomorrow." She turned to Harry as she continued, "I'm sure someone can show you to your dorm, Mr. Potter. I will see you in the morning to hand out schedules." With that she gave him a smile, if a brief one, and turned to walk out of the still open entryway to the tower.

Harry just waited for the door to close, then turned back to the crowds with a grin and said, "Well, from what I hear, one of the things that makes Gryffindor the best House is that Gryffindors throw the best parties!"

This brought more cheers and a great deal of laughter, though Harry did notice Hermione off in one corner frowning rather harshly at that comment. But eventually one of the Weasley twins came forward and slapped Harry on the back while the other dragged out a keg of what the other twin explained was butterbeer. It looked to be the beginning of a very long night.

McGonagall was probably _not_ going to be pleased, come morning.

**A/N:**

For the Sorting Hat, I have never liked the common fanfiction cliché that the Hat will promise not to reveal any secrets it finds during the sorting...and universally actually follows through with that promise. I can't count the number of evil!Dumbledore stories in which he has managed to magically bind Fawkes into servitude, but the Hat for some reason still prevents Dumbledore from obtaining any of the many secrets it pulls from Harry's mind. And after the Hat promises it won't reveal secrets found in the sorting, the otherwise typically paranoid Harry _always_ immediately believes it's word and drops whatever super Occlumency shields he has protecting his vitally important secrets. Because the Hat promised, and magical artifacts specifically made to gather information and serve the Headmaster couldn't _possibly_ lie about such a thing. Of course in this particular story the Hat may or may not be lying, but Harry isn't going to trust it regardless. I would like to read a story in which the Hat assures Harry it won't reveal his secrets, then immediately reveals all to Dumbledore though.

And yes, we finally get a Dumbledore POV. He will be a bit of a manipulative bastard in this story, but not actually evil. He truly does care for Harry...He just cares _more_ for the Wizarding World as a whole, not to mention being overly arrogant about the only correct way of doing things being his way. Which is how I see him in canon too, though we usually just see the grandfatherly face he shows publically. But look at his actual actions and that is the attitude that fits those actions.

He won't be actively out to destroy Harry's life for no particular reason beyond some strange desire to be as evil as possible as some fanfics portray him though. He will only do things which he believes benefits the Greater Good to a greater degree than the costs associated with that action, and he _is_ very smart. A stupid Dumbledore that constantly antagonizes Harry for very little possible benefit is always annoying, and very, very overused.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	9. A Big Dog

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: Thank you once again to those who read and especially to those who reviewed. Over 1100 reviews in just eight chapters! I never expected that kind of response for this story. Especially since the vast majority of them have been extremely positive. While ultimately I do write for myself, seeing everyone else who enjoys my story too definitely helps with the motivation when writing becomes difficult.

Which makes me feel especially terrible that this chapter was delayed so much...But since my last chapter, I have had a bad case of the flu, started a new job, taken some professional certification exams, plus some personal stuff. Suffice to say it has been rather hectic, but things are finally calming down. Barring something catastrophic, the next chapter will be posted April 3, 2013, and I hope to continue an updating schedule of every other week for the foreseeable future.

**Chapter 9: A Big Dog**

Fred Weasley glanced around the Gryffindor common room with amusement. Most of the students had slowly wandered off for their beds over the course of the 'Welcome Back to Hogwarts' slash 'Harry Potter is in Gryffindor' party. But there were a few of the older students who apparently preferred drinking themselves into a stupor and passing out wherever they lay at the time.

It had been a little concerning at first. This was the first year that Fred and his brother had been able to sneak various alcoholic drinks and other necessary party treats into the castle. And although them being the ones supplying most of the party supplies provided all kinds of opportunities for pranks, it also worked through their supplies with alarming rate.

However, just as they began to worry at just how much some of the sixth and seventh years were drinking and how totally they were willing to ignore the minor prank effects that came with it, Harry Potter himself had come to the rescue. Everyone knew that the Potters had plenty of money, but it had been very nice of him to offer to provide whatever money was needed for future party supplies as long as they would be the ones to actually obtain them.

For that matter, Harry seemed a nice bloke all around. Of course he had the supreme self-confidence in his movements and words one would expect from the savior of the Wizarding World, but he didn't seem arrogant about it like Fred had feared. He hadn't looked down on any of them as lesser beings or expected them to serve him or anything like that. He had only known Harry for a few hours so far, so he might not have the full picture, but so far the kid had seemed a pretty down-to-earth friendly person, and he certainly enjoyed a good laugh.

In a couple years, Fred might see if George wanted to try and induct young Harry into the noble art of pranking. He clearly already had a decent sense of humor, and had even helped defuse a few situations from those who didn't appreciate having their hair or skin change colors or being forced to dance a jig. It wasn't like they had pulled out any of the really serious stuff. Those sorts of pranks were strictly reserved for Slytherins. But some people just couldn't take a joke. Potter didn't have a problem with that though. He had actually seemed to have a way of convincing the victims of a prank to laugh along with others, rather than get upset about being laughed at. A much better result all around.

Harry did seem to have an uncanny ability to avoid himself being the target of their pranks though, which was a good sign in a budding prankster. Someone who could recognize a prank coming was someone who could plan one himself.

The first time had been when he had avoided a pranked pastry they had sent his way. It might have just been coincidence, or him not liking that kind of pastry if that was the only incident of its kind. At the time, they hadn't thought anything of it. Then he had casually dodged a jinx sent at his back and given a playful wink at them for the attempt. That had been impressive, but really nothing that shouldn't have been expected of the Boy-Who-Lived. But the third...That one was the one that confused Fred. They had seen him drink a cup they _knew _was potioned, with absolutely no effect. And the kid had just laughed at them when they gave up trying to figure out how he did it and asked him. Yes, the boy definitely had potential.

But for now Fred nudged George awake. The last conscious person in the common room had finally dozed off, or passed out, depending on how polite you were being about it.

The two of them had tried a little firewhisky, but had mostly stuck with butterbeer. Being sober enough to successfully complete pranks was far more interesting than drinking until they fell over.

Besides, it was the perfect time to do an initial investigation of that third floor corridor. They could be the first to see what Dumbledore was hiding. And the party made a pretty good alibi too. If they were asked about it later, there were a dozen people who could attest that they were passed out in the common room. After all, Fred had learned long ago that a lie that made the liar look bad was far more likely to be believed. That was true for everyone, but it was _especially_ true when concerning the Weasley Twins, given the fact that every adult who knew them would keep digging until they came up with _some_ sort of wrong-doing. Start with the drinking, and people wouldn't look any further.

"Come on George," Fred whispered to his brother as he headed towards the exit from the Gryffindor common room. As he walked, he carefully slipped out of a pocket in his robes what looked like a blank piece of parchment until he whispered the words, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," as he tapped it with his wand.

The Marauder's Map, as the parchment was revealed to be, was truly a marvel, for it revealed a detailed map of the entire Hogwarts castle as well as the movements of everyone who resided there. Fred and George still had no idea how it worked, but were determined to figure it out by the time they graduated.

A quick glance at the map revealed no movement in the hallways, so Fred gave a small nod to his brother as George approached and slipped out of the now open doorway with him, putting the map away once more at the same time.

The hallways of Hogwarts were deserted, but that was to be expected after two o'clock in the morning. From prior year's experience, Fred knew that Filtch would occasionally patrol this late, but all the prefects and other teachers would be long asleep in their beds. On the other hand, while the chances of getting caught were reduced, the penalties tended to be much higher as well. Being out less than an hour after curfew tended to result in a detention and a few points lost. But being out this late would have McGonagall coming down hard even if she didn't know what they were up to.

Which was why the two brothers remained silent as they crept through the hallways towards the forbidden third floor corridor. Though why the third floor, Fred would never know. There were entire wings of Hogwarts that were almost never used, but the third floor corridor which Dumbledore had so temptingly forbidden this year was the standard location for the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Every student from second year up knew their way around that corridor quite well.

As they approached the entrance to the third floor, Fred whispered to his brother, "Stop for a minute. Let me check the map to make sure no one is up." He then pulled out the map again, activated it, and glanced at it briefly. He didn't expect anyone this late, and was just scanning the hallways nearby for any movement, so he almost missed it.

But just as he was about to clear and close the map, he noticed another name where there should have just been two. In a clump in the middle of an abandoned hall just short of the door leading to the third floor corridor were _three _names. It took a few seconds for that to really process as he just stared at the extra name which according to the map was less than a dozen feet from him and his brother.

But finally what that name meant worked its way through the _impossibility_ of it being there in his mind, and he spun around and called out, "Harry Potter?" to the shock of his brother.

But his brother was even more shocked when a rather sheepish looking Harry Potter stepped out from behind a set of armor the twins had walked past less than thirty seconds before.

"Umm...Hey guys. How are you doing tonight?" Harry asked with what might have been a charming grin to anyone else. But Fred had attempted that exact grin too many times to fall for it himself.

"Hi Harry." Fred began, and George picked up. "Just out for a walk."

"How about you?" Fred finished.

Many people thought that either they planned out these conversations or had some kind of magical twin mental link or something ridiculous like that. Neither was true. Really it was just a combination of knowing each other _really_ well and being very, very good at improvisation. They knew each other well enough to generally guess the basic direction of the other's thoughts and ideas. And when one of them guessed wrong about where the other was going with something, which did happen occasionally, they were good enough to just roll with the change and continue the conversation as if it was always planned to go that way.

"Oh," Harry responded with a surprised expression on his face. "I was going to go look at the third floor corridor Dumbledore told us to stay away from. It sounded interesting. I assumed you guys were going there too when you left the common room." The cheeky little bugger then gave a casual shrug and started towards the doorway they were standing in front of as he said, "Oh well. Have a nice walk. Guess I will see you in the morning?"

"Wait," Fred said, finding himself shocked once again. "You followed us all the way from the common room? I thought you were just hiding there," he said with a vague hand motion towards the suit of armor the first-year had been behind when Fred noticed him on the map.

That would have been at least vaguely possible. Fred thought he would have noticed Harry as they passed the set of armor, but it was possible they might have missed him. But surely they would have noticed him if he was following them all the way from the common room?

But Harry just shrugged noncommittally before asking, "So how did you know where I was? Something about a map? You clearly didn't see me until whatever that is told you I was there."

"Oh that..." Fred glanced over at George with a concerned look. "That's...Well..." He trailed off and George finished somewhat lamely, "a secret." Normally they were so careful to keep the map hidden from anyone else, only checking it when they were certain no one was watching or listening to them. That hadn't worked out so well for them this time though. Caught by a first-year, on the very first night of school. Fred was sure he would die of shame. Or possibly that was just gas. Maybe George could tell him which it was later.

Harry quirked an eyebrow questioningly, but he also shrugged and replied, "Ok, I guess. Anyway, we were going to see what made Dumbledore forbid this corridor, right?"

Fred glanced over to his twin once again and found him wearing a matching wide grin as they both looked back at Harry. "So, Ickle Harrikins wants to"

"Go exploring with us?" George continued, shifting back into territory more comfortable for the twins. They then advanced on the little first year with wide grins any of the older Hogwarts students would have found quite ominous as they continued shifting back and forth in who spoke.

"Discover Secrets?"

"Find Danger?"

"Unravel mysteries?"

"Evade Capture?"

"Be a distraction?"

"Act as bait?" George finished the steadily increasingly menacing questions, now having advanced close enough to loom over the younger boy.

It did not have the intended effect, as Harry simply grinned back at the two and replied in a voice that simply could not be any more bright and chipper, "Sure! That sounds like fun!"

Fred just looked over at his twin with a slightly confused raised eyebrow, meeting George's identical expression before they simultaneously fell in on both sides of Harry and dropped their arms around the shorter boy's shoulders.

"Very well then, my good chum," George began.

"Onwards we go, into the unknown."

"And may you still be alive on the morrow."

"Or at least not implicate us in your demise," Fred ended in a tone almost as cheerful as the one Harry used moments before.

But Harry just continued to grin back at both of them, clearly not intimidated in the slightest. Which made for what would have been a rather odd sight if anyone had been there to witness it as three widely grinning children hurried into the dark and abandoned third floor corridor late at night with arms wrapped around each other's shoulders.

Having arrived at their destination, none spoke, and they simply looked around for whatever secrets Dumbledore might be hiding here. Not that they could be truly serious secrets, given that telling an entire school to stay away was almost begging said school children to investigate.

But the corridor seemed simply abandoned. Fred knew it well from going to Defense Against the Dark Arts for two years, so he assumed he would have noticed anything significantly out of place. But all he saw was an empty hallway and a few dusty rooms. Or that is all he saw until they reached the closed doorway at the end of the corridor.

Both Fred and George paused at this point to examine the doorway, carefully looking around for any signs of traps or any sort of monitoring. But before they could make more than the most cursory examination, Harry slipped out of the grasp and darted up to the doorway to yank on the handle, totally ignoring their simultaneously harshly whispered, "No, wait!"

But fortunately the door didn't budge.

Not that this changed Fred's annoyance. There was a certain way in which these things were done. The twins had plenty of experience from similar explorations in the past. There was a reason Dumbledore looked at two third years when he explained about the Forbidden Forest being forbidden. And jumping forward to yank open closed doors in forbidden areas wasn't the way to do it. After all, there was also a reason they were _still alive _after taking so many trips into the Forbidden Forest as first and second-years that even Dumbledore was aware of it.

And caution was especially important when Dumbledore said that 'certain death' awaited those who ventured here. Not even the Forbidden Forest got such a strong advertisement, and there were all kinds of ways to get yourself killed very quickly there if you were not careful.

This was clearly something Harry had no understanding of, because by the time the twins had taken slow sighs of relief at Harry's failure to open the door, the boy had pulled out his wand from...somewhere. It must have been one of those fancy quick release wrist holsters because the wand seemed to just appear in his hand. But still without listening to their earlier urges for Harry to wait, he jammed the wand directly into the keyhole and twisting it, causing a quiet click which was rather ominous for all its almost inaudible nature.

This time the Fred's exclamation of, "Wait, stop!" was not in a whisper. George was still a bit too shocked to say anything, but he did jump forward with Fred to grab Harry before he could pull the door open.

Unfortunately, they pulled Harry directly away from the door. The door which Harry was still holding the handle of. A door which opened out into the hall in the direction they were pulling Harry.

When the door swung open rather forcefully, given the strength of the twin's combined pull, both froze. This was a very, very different situation than their normal careful and guarded exploration of the unknown.

But while they were staring into pitch black of the room beyond the now open doorway, Harry took advantage of their shock to slip away from their loosened grasp and hurry through the doorway.

They both probably would have found the desperately quiet screams for Harry to come back quite humorous in other circumstances. But in these circumstances they were far more concerned with the fact that the floating blue ball of light Harry had produced..._somehow_ was showed a massive three-headed dog very much awake and aware of their presence - and not pleased with it, if its low growling meant anything.

But as much as their own senses of terror had already spiked in this new and unexpected situation, they quickly found that things _could_ still get worse when Harry's response to this new sight consisted of an exclamation of "Cool! Look at that!" and taking a step _forward_.

And then the growling, which had been growing steadily louder as Harry moved towards the great beast, abruptly cut off with startling suddenness, replaced with a soft whimper. All either of the twins could see was that Harry was just looking at the giant dog, so this unexpected change was just as strange to them as Harry's apparent insanity.

But even that shock was beaten when Harry finally reached the cerberus and stretched up to _scratch it behind the ear_ of its middle head. More importantly, this meant that the dog's giant muzzle, large enough to literally bite an eleven year old in half, was pressed against his chest, and the right head was looking directly at his unprotected back.

And yet it didn't attack.

As Harry continued to scratch, he murmured, "Aww...You're a good boy, aren't you? Yes you are. Such a good doggy!" in the exact tone generally reserved for six inch tall puppies, rather than eight foot tall monsters. But instead of doing what would make sense in a rational world and immediately killing and eating Harry, its tail started wagging quite vigorously as its body loomed over the comparatively tiny Harry Potter.

This was finally enough to shake the twins out of the state of astonished horror which had virtually consumed them for the past minute.

So Fred turned to George and quietly whispered, "Am I dreaming, George?"

"Well, I don't think you are dreaming," he responded just as quietly. "But I might be. What do you think?"

Fred shrugged in reply. "I don't think you are dreaming either if I'm not. This is...weird though, right? I haven't suddenly gone insane or anything?"

"Well..." George hesitated. "No more insane than normal, I suppose. Do you think it is just tame? Maybe just looks scary, but is actually very friendly?"

"It's a cerberus. I remember hearing about those from Charlie. They are not supposed to really be tamable. They make good guard dogs in that they will tear anyone who comes close apart, but no one really uses them because that 'anyone' includes the person who put the cerberus there. They are only supposed to respect and leave alone things bigger and stronger than them. So...dragons and the like, I suppose." Fred cocked his head to the side and squinted, trying to remember everything Charlie had mentioned about them. "But maybe someone figured out how to control them. Think we should check it out?"

After a short hesitation, George said, "Sure, oh brother of mine. You first."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly. I'm the pretty one!"

"No, that was me, remember?"

"Ah...right you are." But still Fred hesitated, not quite willing to take those steps which would put him within range of those massive, flesh rending jaws, regardless of how docile it seemed.

But his hesitation was interrupted as Harry turned back at him, not stopping his scratching as he did so, and called out, "Are you guys putting on that show for me, or are you really like that when by yourselves?" He sounded honestly curious, and not at all concerned by the fact that he was now not looking at _any_ of the three massive heads which could decide to tear him to pieces at a moment's notice.

This was enough to reassure Fred, so he took a deep breath and started walking forward as he said, "I have no idea what you are talking about Harrikens."

"That's a scary thought," Harry replied dryly.

George just snorted. "_That's_ the thing you find scary?"

Harry blinked in surprise and frowned in a confused manner. "What else would I be scared of?" After a short pause, the cerberus butted his head into Harry's chest knocking him back a couple steps, apparently wanting him to move his scratching to a different area. This did seem to remind Harry that a veritable machine of death was literally rubbing against him at this particular moment though. So his eyes widened as he continued, "Oh, you mean him? Nah, he's a good doggy."

At this, he turned back to the beast and started scratching more enthusiastically once again.

The change came very quickly. At _least_ as fast as when the cerberus had originally switched from growling threateningly to whimpering subserviently. One moment the middle head was panting in satisfaction at the thorough ear-rub he was receiving and the other two heads were just looking on with mild curiosity and ignoring the two redheaded twins. The next moment, the left head apparently decided to make a meal out of Fred and lunged forward with shocking speed. It was so fast, in fact, that Fred couldn't even do anything other than freeze in terror.

Harry though moved with what had to be at least equal speed. Fred wasn't actually watching him at that particular moment though, given that a gaping maw was rushing towards him, and that took most of his attention.

But the moment before the cerberus' teeth reached him, Harry appeared just in front of him and reached _into _the monster's mouth to grab hold of one of it canines. And despite the fact that his hand didn't even reach all the way around the tooth, he used that as a handhold to twist the head to the side and into the ground hard enough to shake the floor slightly.

And with that, the other two heads of the cerberus dropped down to the ground and all three began to whine piteously as Harry started scolding the creature like a puppy who made a mess in the living room. "Bad doggy! Bad! He isn't food. You shouldn't try to eat him! That's bad!"

Fred used this time to scurry back to his brother outside the room and well out of the range of any of the heads, should they decide to try and make a snack of him once again.

After another thirty seconds of scolding and of the twins looking on in awe, Harry let the left head up and started softly scratching it under its jaw as he looked back at the twins. "Sorry about that...He seems to think you are food for some reason. You probably shouldn't come here again without me in the future. Sometimes it takes a few times for puppies to learn, and that wouldn't really be good."

"Umm...yeah. That wouldn't be good at all. I don't think we will be coming back here at all though, after tonight." George stated slowly. Fred was still in too much shock to say anything.

Harry shrugged and gave a pat to the head he had been scratching before pushing it back away from him as he walked out the door and pushed it closed again. "Well, that works too, I guess. Anyway, thanks for letting me come with you to check out the third-floor corridor! It was pretty exciting. You will have to show me all the good spots in the Forbidden Forest some time."

"Err...right. Maybe some time," Fred finally responded, his tremors subsiding to manageable levels.

"Ok! Well, I'm going to go explore the castle some more tonight. I will see you guys in the morning, I guess?"

"Yeah, sure. Just watch out for Filtch and Mrs. Norris," George replied a little uncertainly. "She can be...kind of...uhh...mean."

"Ok, I'll keep an eye out for them. Thanks for the warning," Harry called out over his shoulder as he walked away, leaving the two twins in a rare state of speechlessness standing alone in the third-floor forbidden corridor.

A long silence passed before Fred finally broke in, "So that was..." He trailed off, not quite sure of how to describe the long series of insane events which had just taken place.

But George seemed to understand, as he replied, "Yes, it definitely was. Very much so."

Another silence followed, though not quite as long.

"So," Fred asked, "Ready to head back, I suppose?" He quickly pulled out the Marauder's Map while he asked the question to glance around for any movement, finding none except for the mark that indicated Harry Potter had already made it up to the fifth floor.

A few minutes later as they walked through the darkened but familiar hallways of Hogwarts, George slowly asked, "So...Do you suppose that all those ridiculous Harry Potter stories might be true after all?"

"You mean the ones in which Harry kills a rampaging werewolf at four, slays an entire coven of vampires at six, and tames a wild dragon to serve as his mount at seven?" Fred took a moment to consider it. "That...does seem a little too close to what happened tonight for comfort. Dad said they weren't real though, but I guess it's possible he was wrong."

Another moment passed in silent contemplation before George started snickering.

"What?" asked Fred.

"Ginny is going to be so mad that we got to be part of a Harry Potter Adventure, and she didn't."

Fred started snickering at this thought too. "So what do you think the best way to gloat would be? Should we start sending letters now, or should we wait until we are in person at Christmas to let her know what she missed?"

"Oh, that's just mean Fred." George cocked his head to the side in thought. "But we should definitely start hinting at it in letters now. Let the anticipation of the full story build up over the months. I think that would have the biggest impact. She'll go mental. And mum might end up a little barmy too, having to put up with her complaints over not being here."

"So two for the price of one, huh?" Fred laughed again, the world returning to normal as he bantered and plotted with his brother. Or perhaps the sense of normalcy had more to do with the fact that Harry Potter wasn't around anymore.

Eventually the laughter died down and Fred said, "Should be a fun few months. And there is always next year if she is really determined to be part of her own Harry Potter Adventure. Assuming she can ever work up the courage to speak to him anyway."

**A/N:**

Writing from the perspective of the Weasley twins was surprisingly difficult. I'm not really certain why, either. Their personalities and motivations are not particularly complex. It isn't that difficult to keep them in character. The situation naturally lent itself to humor, which is the twin's bread and butter. And yet this chapter was one of the most difficult I have ever written. Perhaps because they were mostly the target of the humor, rather than the instigators as is more natural for them?

Well, regardless of why, I'm still not sure how well it came out. And that difficulty certainly didn't help when it was so hard to find the time to write because of how crazy life has been lately. Finally managing to get half an hour to sit down and write and then just ending up staring at the screen, not sure how to put what I wanted into words was extremely frustrating. But, here it is. In spite of the delay and relative shortness, I hope you liked it. I promise next chapter will be completed much, much more quickly.

Please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	10. First Classes

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: I would like to thank everyone for their continued support, especially when the previous chapter took so long.

Based on several reviews, it seems there was some confusion over what the twins saw on the Marauder's Map in the last chapter. When I stated that they saw three names on the map, I meant they saw the names Fred Weasley, George Weasley, and Harry Potter. In hindsight, I can understand how this was confusing, but I refuse to accept that a group of school children could have created an artifact which can divine the true names of someone's _soul_. So while the map is a powerful and useful artifact, and will somewhat restrict Harry's movements in Hogwarts as long as the twins have it, it isn't going to give him away as Naruto Uzumaki or the container of the Juubi. I will probably go into more depth of the exact capabilities and restrictions of the map for the purposes of this fic in a later chapter.

Here is the new chapter though, and it's even on time. And of a more reasonable length too! Hope you all enjoy it.

**Chapter 10 – First Classes**

The morning seemed to come especially early for Harry. It was possible that might have been at least partially because he didn't go to bed until after four in the morning. But Harry could operate on three hours of sleep for quite a while before it really started to negatively impact him. For that matter, he could go about a week with no sleep at all without any significant loss of focus, though it started getting pretty annoying after a while. Still, chakra really was a wonderful thing, especially when you had it in truly enormous quantities.

And anyone who said that the ability to breath fire or move at superhuman speeds were the best part of being able to use chakra never had a chance to laugh at their barely conscious roommates as they stumbled into doors after only receiving those few hours of sleep without the benefits of chakra. Ron in particular didn't seem very appreciative of his amusement though.

But Harry didn't let that bother him, so he just waved over his shoulder and called out, "I'll see you guys in the Great Hall" as he hurried down the stairs into the common room.

The Gryffindor common room was still pretty messy from the prior night, but most of the current occupants were ignoring that. The majority of them were older students he had met in passing during the party, and they were generally gathering in small groups before heading out of the common room, presumably for breakfast. The only exception was also the only other first year already down in the common room.

Hermione Granger seemed to be spending her morning alternating between reading the rather thick tome on her lap and looking around with obvious disapproval at the signs of the previous night's excesses, which she had gone to bed far too early to have been a part of.

"Hey Hermione," Harry said with a smile and a small wave as he headed in her direction.

Of course this just focused her obvious ire on him, rather than the mess that had been left in the common room.

"Harry!" she exclaimed. "You really shouldn't have encouraged them to throw a party like that. According to Hogwarts: A History, it was against all kinds of school rules, and I think a few laws too! And if that wasn't bad enough, it was the night before the first day of class. Now people are going to have to go to their first classes of the year exhausted or even _hung-over_," she whispered harshly with an accompanying glare at one student a few years older than them who was clearly wincing at the light in the common room.

Not that the boy paid any attention to the glare, or even noticed it for that matter. He clearly had other things to concern himself with. And if he had been paying attention, he probably would have, like Harry, focused more on Hermione's feat of giving that entire tirade without taking a breath rather than any ineffectual scolding.

Hermione just continued with her little rant though. "We should have been reading through the first few chapters of our books again, or at least sleeping to make sure we are well rested for class. Not staying up unreasonably late and..._partying_."

She said the word with an impressive amount of scorn for an eleven year old. So much so that Harry was barely able to catch himself from bursting into laughter. That probably wouldn't have gone over well.

Instead, he just shook his head and waved for Hermione to follow him. "Come on Hermione, let's go to breakfast. We can talk on the way."

"Oh!" Her eyes widened and she seemed frozen in surprise at the invitation for a moment before she pulled herself together and flushed slightly as she quickly stuffed her book into her bag and stood. "Ok Harry," she answered in a softer tone.

They were silent for the few moments it took to walk out of the common room through the portrait entrance. And it wasn't one of those comfortable silences either. Actually it was pretty awkward.

Harry just ignored that and started talking once they were walking through the hallways. "Hermione, first of all, as I understand it, there is a potion to cure any hang-over anyone might have. And there is even one to give energy if someone is really so exhausted they can't focus. So any students really suffering can just go to the...school nurse? I guess?"

He gave a casual shrug and continued, "Well anyway, they can get fixed up in just a couple minutes. Besides, even if that wasn't true, this is just the first day of classes. While I haven't ever been to a magical class before, I refuse to believe that there is enough difference between magicals and muggles that the first classes of the year will be all that different. You know all they will do is hand out the syllabus and discuss what we will be learning this year. Maybe they will demonstrate a little of the magic we will be learning, and at _best_ students will review what they have forgotten over the summer. So it really doesn't matter much if we are not quite at one hundred percent this morning."

Hermione looked horrified at the implication that what they were learning today might not be critical information requiring all of their focus to master. But she rallied herself and responded, "That's...That's not the point! The professors should have our full attention regardless of exactly what they are teaching. And even if their...condition can be fixed with magic, they really shouldn't be bothering the medi-witch with the problems they brought on themselves!

"And more importantly," she continued, "that doesn't change the fact that you were breaking the rules. Why, you could have all received detention on the very first night. Before classes even started!"

Harry just gave a shrug which virtually radiated his total lack of concern. "Yeah, possibly. That is our choice to take that risk though. I can't imagine that any student at the party last night didn't understand that we would probably get in some trouble in the unlikely event of Professor McGonagall deciding to drop in on us at one in the morning. But each of us decided that having some fun and meeting some new people was worth that risk. And also worth being tired and possibly hung-over in the morning. No one other than possibly ourselves were hurt, so that was our choice to make. Besides, there wasn't even enough alcohol there for anyone to drink enough to get dangerously drunk even if they wanted to. Not even with the pretty low alcohol tolerances of a bunch of teenagers."

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, probably angrily if her expression was anything to go by, but Harry quickly continued before she got a chance, "Look, you are clearly someone who cares a great deal about following all of the rules whenever possible." At her hurt expression, he quickly continued to reassure her, "And there isn't anything wrong with that. Really, there isn't, though some people will probably tell you there is. The world needs people like you at least as much as it needs people like me who have a certain casual disregard for the rules when necessary." He gave a thoughtful expression and tacked on, "Or entertaining."

That last comment didn't seem to reassure the girl, so he hurried on with, "Even Gryffindor, which seems to largely share that attitude of seeing the rules as more of a general guideline than a hard and fast line not to be crossed. But if you want to follow the rules, that should be your business. Other people should be allowed to make their own choices as long as they are not hurting anyone."

Hermione was clearly now thinking about what he said now, rather than just reacting in anger, but it was just as clear from her frown that she still didn't like it or approve. "But the rules are there for a reason. Someone didn't just randomly come along and decide how things should be just because they felt like making the students unhappy. The rules are there for our own good. So they should be followed by everyone, not just those who happen agree with them."

Harry nodded, which made Hermione start to smile, but then he said, "Well it's a good point, but not really realistic. First because not all rules are really for our own good. Frequently the people who created the rules didn't think through all the implications. Or sometimes they were even purposefully malicious in creating them." Cutting off Hermione's objection before it could begin, he once again continued, "People who create rules are people too. People with their own goals. Sometimes those goals are for everyone's best interest, and sometimes they are just for their own best interest.

"Anyway, even if that isn't the case, rules tend to be over-generalizations about what people need that don't really apply to all people or in all situations. For example, the particular rules in question from last night's little gathering...For many people, yeah, it probably would have been better for them to get a few more hours of sleep and not drink so much. For me though, I don't need as much sleep as most people, and as far as I can tell, it is literally impossible for me to drink enough to become intoxicated. Probably just something weird about my magic, but my point is that the reasons behind the rule not to stay up late drinking just don't apply in my case."

"Even if that is true," Hermione answered in a tone that said she still didn't agree, "You still acted as a bad example to a lot of other students that _did_ suffer from those things."

"Yeah, but they are the ones who chose to do it. Besides, it could be argued that in this particular case the benefits of forming new friendships with our house-mates are greater in the long term than any of the minor consequences of last night anyway." Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair, which did absolutely nothing to change the short spikes it was in. "Regardless, people who decide they don't like or just don't want to follow a rule are going to find a way around it. It's hard enough to try and keep people from breaking rules in ways that _do _harm others. Wasting your time trying to convince people who are never going to listen not to break rules that at worst only harm themselves is ultimately going to be...Well, a waste of time. Not to mention drive people away from you."

Hermione had already been opening her mouth to make a retort when Harry's last sentence made her shut it with an audible click as she looked down at the floor in thought as they walked. Harry was content to give her time to think through his words, so they continued through the incredibly confusing hallways of Hogwarts vaguely in the direction of the Great Hall for another minute in silence.

Finally Hermione looked up at him and asked quietly, "Do I drive people away like that?"

Harry sighed before answering, "I've known you for less than twenty-four hours, so you probably know the answer to that question better than I do. But a lot of people who place high importance on following the rules tend to...well, no offence, but they tend to harp on about them to everyone around them who they see breaking rules. It's ok to explain your reasoning about why someone shouldn't do something, but if someone is going to do it anyway, going on and on about it doesn't do anything other than annoy them most of the time.

"If you want to follow the rules, more power to you. You should do it for your own good though. If others want to break the rules, as long as they are not hurting anyone, you need to be willing to let it go. You don't have to join them if you don't want to, but you have to let others make up their own minds, and maybe learn their own lessons from the consequences of taking those actions, if it comes to that. And even allow them to learn from their own mistakes sometimes. Or yes, you will drive them away."

He then gave her a comforting smile and continued, "Which I hope you don't do, because you seem like a very interesting and intelligent person. If you are willing to let people make up their own minds rather than force your own views on them, I think a lot of people will want to be friends with you."

Hermione's smile was a little tentative, and it was clear that she was still considering the implications of the conversation. But Harry was fairly certain that she would take it the right way once she worked everything out in her head.

The girl who reminded him so much of Sakura clearly had poor social skills and a skewed view of human interactions. But that was something he could help her with, and if she was willing to work with him, he looked forward to getting to know her better.

* * *

><p>Breakfast had been a fairly quiet affair, at least initially. Hermione was still clearly working through her issues, so while they did speak about small things in an effort to get to know one another better, there were also long gaps in the conversation. And Harry left her to it. They could discuss it more in the future, but for now, he gave Hermione her space.<p>

Eventually most of the rest of Gryffindor joined them, and things livened up quite a bit. This was especially true once the Weasley twins showed up and started carrying on as appeared to be usual for them. Though apart from the occasional long considering glance in Harry's direction, they seemed to be ignoring the events of the previous night.

They probably hadn't realized that most of the night's adventure had been a prank on them at Harry's hands. Not that he expected them to realize that any time soon, but that didn't make it any less funny. He did hope he could be there for their expressions when they did finally realize the degree to which a first year had screwed with their heads before classes even started. That should be almost as entertaining as their reactions last night had been.

But eventually Professor McGonagall came around and passed out the schedules for the year, so Harry quickly gathered Hermione, Ron, and Neville together to grab their books from the Gryffindor Tower and start their search for the Transfiguration classroom, which it turned out was first on Monday mornings.

The castle continued to be a little frustrating with its unwillingness to conform to basic three-dimensional space, making finding the right way to get to a given location a little difficult. But fortunately the four of them left half an hour before class started, and so managed to arrive almost ten minutes early as the first people in the classroom.

Well the first except for the cat sitting on the teacher's desk in the front. Though he wasn't sure it was actually a cat. Apart from the cerberus of the prior night, it was the most magical animal he had seen yet. The magic was far too complicated for him to have any idea what the cat could do with it at this early stage in his magical training, but it was definitely too much magic for it to just be a normal cat. Perhaps one of those kneazles that he had seen mentioned in his books.

But he disregarded that as unimportant for now and physically dragged Hermione to the back of the classroom with Ron and Neville, in spite of her obvious struggles to escape and sit in the front. But she didn't end up saying anything, so Harry just manhandled her into the seat next to his, giving her a bright grin in response to her annoyed glare at the treatment.

But she quickly seemed to forget her anger as the four got into a conversation about what sorts of things they might learn to use Transfiguration for this year as other students slowly trickled in.

Eventually the last couple students hurried into the room several minutes before half past eight, when the class was scheduled to begin.

Once the last student had taken his seat, everyone began looking around for Professor McGonagall. Like Harry, the others in the class really didn't think that McGonagall was the sort to be late to her own class, but as the minutes ticked by, it seemed more and more likely.

Then, rather suddenly and without warning at the exact scheduled beginning of the class, the cat which had long been sitting quietly on the desk leaped off, rapidly transforming into Professor McGonagall before her feet even touched the ground.

Without pausing for any questions or even allowing the murmurs of amazement which began to sweep through the room, the stern professor began her speech, "Welcome to my class. I am Professor McGonagall, and this is Transfiguration, which is the art of changing the form of things. Transfiguration is an incredibly useful and versatile art which will serve you well throughout your lives should you put the necessary time and effort into learning it.

"But Transfiguration is also some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she continued with a threatening tone. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

She then demonstrated several uses of Transfiguration which were probably far too advanced for first years. They were interesting though. Apparently not only could objects be changed into different objects, but even into living organisms, which was demonstrated by turning a desk into a pig and back.

This was rather fascinating to Harry, because although he could create objects, animals, or whatever else he wanted from nothing with the extremely advanced chakra technique The Creation of All Things, he could not change the form of something which already existed. So the idea of being able to do so with magic, especially when it was simple enough to be taught to eleven year olds, greatly interested him.

Unfortunately, after that initial demonstration, most of the rest of the class was fairly boring. Professor McGonagall seemed to be a decent teacher, if a bit excessively stern. But Transfiguration on Mondays was a double class, meaning it lasted slightly over three hours. That was a long time to go over a bunch of dry magical theory and transfiguration laws Harry was pretty sure he could figure out a way to break by the end of the year.

After all, if magic could shift one thing into another, there was no reason it couldn't be used to change something into food or gold. Especially since animals could be created, which were just food which hadn't yet been cooked. Personally he expected that those 'magical laws' were created by the government to prevent the disruption of the economy and taught to students as absolute laws to prevent anyone from even attempting such things.

But regardless of if he eventually found a way to break these laws or not, it was pretty boring learning all about them.

Finally, in the last half an hour of class, Professor McGonagall began the first practical segment of any of the student's magical training. A wave of excitement washed through the class as the professor passed out a match to each student. Not even Harry was exempt. Although he could already create displays of power which dwarfed even the best Professor McGonagall could produce, much less the very first spell taught to first-year students, this was still his first foray into gaining direct control over his magic. And magic would someday open up entire new avenues of possibilities for him.

But not today, it seemed.

Once the matches had been handed out, Professor McGonagall demonstrated the basic spell to turn them into needles and set the class loose. It had only taken a single viewing of the spell for his Sharingan to memorize it. But as he very quickly found out, simply being able to make the wand motions for the spell exactly perfectly and getting his pronunciation just as the professor had demonstrated were not enough to use the spell. Even knowing the exact flow of magic needed to make the spell work didn't help when he couldn't control his magic enough to make it do what he had witnessed.

So instead of ending up with a small needle, he ended up with a rather large explosion, given the size of the match he started the exercise with.

Fortunately, after the results of his wand-testing a month ago, this outcome was not totally unexpected, so he had already fortified himself with chakra before the explosion, preventing any injury.

His desk was not so fortunate. Or the three pieces his desk was now in were not so fortunate, to be more precise. At least they had not been blown very far. One piece had just fallen into his lap, if 'blasted with enough force to break the ribs of an ordinary child' could be described as 'fallen'. The second slid across the floor for a dozen feet, and the last was still connected to the desk's legs, if barely.

But right now the more important factor was probably that everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and were staring at him. Well Professor McGonagall was staring at him and marching over in his direction as fast as her legs could carry her short of breaking out into an undignified jog.

"_Mr. Potter_!" she exclaimed in what had to be her sternest voice. "What did you do?" She then paused, and just before he could answer that he just attempted the spell she had demonstrated, she proved his earlier assumption about the maximum severity someone's tone could reach incorrect as she asked, "And _why_ do you have a _dagger_?"

This caused Harry, along with the rest of the class, to look down at his wand. It was only then that it really dawned on him that none of the teachers had seen his wand before. He normally kept it within one of the concealed storage seals tattooed onto his right palm, which allowed him to release or re-seal it with barely more than a thought, just like the rest of his weaponry.

And because he was so used to carrying around all kinds of various sharp metallic objects, one more hadn't really seemed unusual to him. He had known that most wands were wooden from his experience with Ollivander, but he hadn't really considered that the professors might object to him doing magic with a piece of metal sharpened to a needle sharp point. Wands were weapons _already_, so what was the difference?

"Ah...I think the technical term is 'stiletto'." He held up his wand to allow a more careful examination. "See? No actual blade, just the point, so it isn't really a dagger." He gave a shrug while very carefully concealing his own amusement at Professor McGonagall's expression of shocked outrage.

"Anyway," he continued. "This is my wand. Or at least it's what Mr. Ollivander gave me to use. And for the point, he said that would improve its quality as a wand or something. Something about how the shape impacts its ability to channel magic, but you would have to ask him about exactly how that works."

And all of that was _technically_ true. The fact that he had specifically asked for the point and that making it into a higher quality wand was exactly the opposite of what someone with unnaturally massive stores of magic, and virtually no control over that magic should get was irrelevant. Well...maybe not irrelevant, but certainly those facts wouldn't be appreciated by Professor McGonagall, and Harry wouldn't want to burden her with knowledge that might make her even more annoyed than she already was. It was really for her own peace of mind that she not know.

Finally Professor McGonagall reached up and adjusted her glasses as she gave Harry a disapproving glare. "And what happened to your desk?"

"No idea," Harry responded with a grin he didn't bother to hide. "I tried the spell just like you showed us, and the matchstick...well, it blew up. A lot."

With a very put-upon sigh, Professor McGonagall waved her wand, making the desk reassemble itself, before placing another of the matchsticks in front of Harry.

"Very well then. Please attempt to not cause any more explosions today, Mr. Potter."

To Professor McGonagall's great dismay, that wasn't even the largest of the many explosions which would follow.

* * *

><p>Harry was grinning as he left the Transfiguration classroom to head back towards the Great Hall for lunch. In spite of some mild disappointment that he hadn't managed to gain any measurable control over his magic, it wasn't particularly surprising at this early point in his magical training, given his immense magical reserves.<p>

"So...That was interesting," Neville hesitantly stated as the group walked through the hallways of Hogwarts.

"Yeah, I don't think Professor McGonagall likes me much," Harry replied as he scratched the back of his head abashedly. "I'm not sure why. I didn't fall asleep in class or anything. Not even when the lecture got _really_ boring."

Hermione had been fuming since well before they walked out of class, and she could clearly hold it in no longer. "You disrupted the entire class! No one else was able to focus on getting the spell to work because you were too busy blowing up your desk. And the floor that one time too!"

"Don't blame me," Harry replied defensively. "She _told_ me to try again."

"She also told you not to cause any more explosions," Hermione ground out through clenched teeth.

Ron, with what was starting to appear to be a normal lack of foresight for him, decided to break into the conversation at this point. With a friendly pat to Harry's shoulder, he exclaimed, "I thought it was amazing mate! Especially that time you got the entire top of the desk to go flying almost all the way across the room. You even almost hit Professor McGonagall with that one! She really did not take that well, did she?"

Harry chuckled along with Ron at this, but it proved to be an unwise comment as it swiftly brought Hermione's wrath down on Ron. Turning to face him, she continued her rant, "It was not 'amazing'. It was destructive, and a huge disruption. Some of us were actually trying to learn magic, rather than waste our time watching Harry blow his desk up over and over again."

"Hey! That's not fair," Harry interjected. "It's not my fault Professor McGonagall told me to keep doing it, and she is the one who kept giving me matchsticks...I think because she was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. But it wasn't like I was trying to screw the spell up. The fact that I'm awesome even when I can't manage a spell correctly is hardly my fault."

Hermione just gave a slight growl and turned away with a scowl. Though she did at least stay with the group rather than stomping off, which Harry counted as a win.

* * *

><p>Since the first Transfiguration class of the week was a double, that made it the only morning class on Mondays. So the group quickly headed back to the Great Hall for lunch, which passed relatively peacefully until Draco Malfoy decided he needed to come join Harry at the Gryffindor table.<p>

"So Potter," he sneered as he approached their table with Goyle and Crabbe. "I hear you were quite pathetic in Transfiguration. I don't know why everyone is so surprised. I could have told them that you were all talk."

Harry rolled his eyes with obvious contempt before responding, "Well, if it isn't Mr. Bad Faith himself. Did you need something?"

Malfoy sputtered incoherently for a few seconds before finally recovering. He seemed to force himself to take a slow breath to calm himself before speaking, though his normally pale cheeks remained slightly flushed with anger, if you couldn't otherwise tell from his fairly obvious glare.

"I just came over to point out what _some_ of us already knew," Malfoy scoffed. "That the Boy-Who-Lived isn't so special after all. You probably only got into Hogwarts in the first place because of your fame anyway. Once everyone learns how pitiful you really are at magic, you're sure to get thrown out."

Ron and Neville were both clearly fuming at Malfoy's words, and even Hermione had a growing frown, though she had also shrunk in on herself slightly at the schoolyard bully's words. Probably based on long experience having to deal with people like him, unfortunately.

But before Ron or Neville could respond angrily and counterproductively to Harry's efforts to belittle Malfoy, he smirked back at the boy and quite calmly responded, "Oh really, Bad Faith? Everyone else in Transfiguration tried and failed to learn how to turn a matchstick into a needle. I learned how to make explosions at will, apparently. Is it just me, or does that seem _better _to you too? So if you are done being jealous of me being so awesome, why don't you scurry along and find someone else to annoy."

"Why you..." Malfoy trailed off, apparently not quite sure how to respond to someone else speaking so condescendingly to him. But after a few seconds he yanked out his wand and continued in a furious tone, "How dare you speak about me like that! I am a Malfoy, and you are just a blood-traitor who can't manage the simplest Transfiguration without screwing it up!"

Harry's lips twitched in amusement at Malfoy's attempt to intimidate him, but he managed to hold his laughter down.

"What was that, Bad Faith?" He asked, barely preventing the amusement from leaking into his tone, and instead just making it sound like an honest question. "Oh, I see. You wanted me to show you what I learned in Transfiguration today, was that it?"

He unsealed his own wand and casually pointed it vaguely in the direction Malfoy was standing, causing the blond-haired boy to shift slightly away from him with a suddenly nervous expression.

But the Slytherin quickly rallied and gave what was at least a fairly strong front to conceal his fear, "It's not like you could do it with anything other than a matchstick anyway. And stop calling me that! I am a Malfoy, and you will respect me as I deserve!"

Harry just rolled his eyes again and turned away from Malfoy and back to the Gryffindor table, clearly dismissing him with a, "Whatever Bad Faith."

Harry also resealed his wand as he turned, using the movement to conceal exactly where it went. Besides, it wasn't like he would need it if it came to that. He would be able to feel the movement of magic long before Malfoy could cast a spell even if he did try something. Though there would be some amusement in beating him with magic.

Because Malfoy was very wrong about him not being able to repeat his 'success' with making matchsticks blow up on a different object.

While the control needed to perform any sort of Transfiguration remained far beyond him at the moment, he had seen not only the magic used to change a matchstick into a needle, but also several other Transfigurations McGonagall performed as an introduction into what Transfiguration was capable of. From this, he had found that all transfiguration seemed to work along similar principles. First, the caster's magic was injected into the object to be transfigured. Then the magic was manipulated to cause the object to change form. The second step did appear to differ a little in the specifics of how the change happened for each type of object.

But his spells were not even getting to that point. What was causing the matchstick to explode was simply sending both far too much magic into the matchstick and the massive fluctuations in his magic as he inserted it.

Which meant that his matchstick to needle spell could be applied to pretty much anything and it would make it explode. Normally once the spell got to the second part, if the manipulation of the magic wasn't right to change the object correctly, nothing would happen, but when the injection of the magic itself was causing the explosion that didn't really matter.

But, fortunately for Malfoy it didn't come up, since regardless of how infuriated the little prat was, he apparently wasn't quite prepared to cast a spell at the back of the Boy-Who-Lived in front of dozens of witnesses. So instead he just growled slightly and called out, "Wait until my father hears about this," as he turned and walked away with his two bodyguard.

Several long seconds passed before Ron burst out, "That was great! Almost as good as the first time you dealt with that snake back on the train!"

Neville nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it's really great to see you stand up to him. Usually he is always talking down to everyone. It's nice to see him get the same back every once in a while."

Harry just grinned and slapped Neville on the back, clearly taking him off guard as the pudgy boy flinched away, but then gave a tentative smile back to Harry as he listened. "Hey, you can do it too. Bad Faith over there is just a bunch of hot air. He has been told his whole life how great he is, but he doesn't actually have anything to back it up."

The two other boys and several of the surrounding Gryffindors who had been eagerly listening in laughed and nodded along. Though if they would ever have the courage to stand up to the bully themselves remained to be seen.

Once the laughter died down, Hermione hesitantly added, "Well, I guess so...But you really shouldn't have threatened him like that. What if a teacher had heard you? You could have gotten in a lot of trouble."

In response Harry shrugged before giving an expression of such intense innocence that no one would ever possibly believe it was real. "Threaten him? When did I do that? I just offered to show him what I learned in transfiguration today. I thought he might have wanted some tips." Unable to hold the expression any longer, he broke down laughing before continuing, "Besides, no harm done, right? You need to learn to relax a little and have some fun Hermione."

If her huff of annoyance meant anything, Hermione wasn't convinced, but Harry did note the small, almost invisible smile she couldn't quite conceal.

* * *

><p>The next several days seemed to pass rather quickly. Like the other students, it took a little while for Harry to get a feel for his various teachers, and it was really too soon to make any final judgments. But so far, Harry was enjoying the Hogwarts experience a great deal.<p>

Transfiguration remained by far the worst class, and even that was extremely entertaining. It was the only class in which the professor kept asking him to blow things up, at least. Well, she hadn't used those _exact_ words, but given that blowing things up was the result of every transfiguration spell he attempted and she kept asking him to do it again, he wasn't sure how else you could describe it, regardless of Hermione's many frustrated attempts.

For that matter, keeping himself from bursting out laughing at Professor McGonagall's mounting frustration with his attempts was becoming more difficult. She seemed mildly obsessed with figuring out why his perfect wand movements and spell pronunciations were having such abysmal results. At first she had been convinced it was because of his wand, but apparently after having a conversation with Ollivander at Harry's urging, she had dropped that line of inquiry.

He could have told her that because Transfiguration was the area of spellcasting which required the greatest finesse and control over your magic, he was channeling not just far too much power, but an inconsistent flow of power into the object to be Transfigured, causing it to blow up. It was something he was quite familiar with from his original attempts at chakra control and early difficulties with similarly sensitive areas of chakra manipulation in his prior life. Unfortunately, he couldn't exactly explain to McGonagall _how_ he understood exactly where his difficulties were coming from, so she would have to figure it out on her own.

In the meantime, he found the process rather amusing, as did most of the other students. And most of his other classes were going significantly better.

Fortunately, it had turned out that Charms had a far lower degree of required control to make the spells work. He did tend to massively overcharge the spells, but unlike Transfiguration, this generally didn't make the spells outright fail, but instead just made them a lot more powerful. Unfortunately so in some cases. For example, the lumos spell they had learned in the first class had produced a light so bright it had temporarily damaged the sight of about half the class to the extent they required a trip to the hospital wing.

Still, at least the magic worked, and he was perfectly willing to put in the time and effort learning to tone down such spells to a more reasonable level. And unlike McGonagall who continued to become more and more frustrated and almost angry with him, Flitwick seemed quite excited by the whole spectacle. Of course, from then on his first attempts at a spell were performed in a shielded area Flitwick created, but that wasn't really a problem.

Herbology was a lot of fun too. He had always enjoyed gardening, and having actively aggressive plants made the whole process a lot more interesting. And the occasional subtle use of the Mokuton bloodline effectively gave him a green thumb of absurd proportions. While technically the Mokuton was a wood control bloodline, over the centuries of his use of the ability, Harry had learned to use it to control any sort of plants. Even magical ones, it turned out, though they were marginally more difficult to manipulate. And the possibilities of all of the different things various magical plants were capable of, or would be capable of when combined with the use of the Mokuton, kept Harry very interested in the subject.

And his other three classes - Astronomy, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and History, were all effectively free periods, which he enjoyed.

While they were told that the knowledge of astronomy was required in planning of most advanced rituals, and even some high end potions brewing, nothing he learned in that class was really necessary to him personally. With the Sharingan, he could map the entire night sky in moments, recalling anything that could be found in it instantly and with greater clarity than all but the best modern telescopes, much less the pathetic medieval ones Hogwarts had them using. He could find any sort of required celestial alignments already if it ever came up, so spending years memorizing various constellations and star movements was really unnecessary. At least Professor Sinistra seemed fine with him leaving early after the couple minutes it took for him to fill out that night's star chart. Well she let him go as soon as she got over her amazement that he had completed an assignment meant to take an hour without even using his telescope.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was the area of magic that Harry was by far the least interested in. He already knew how to kill people more effectively than any school would ever teach. Adding magical methods seemed relatively unnecessary. He was far more interested in the other things magic could do than in the ability to throw some pointless curses around. Apart from possible pranking applications, he really couldn't see much point in most of it. And even those potential pranking applications were for the most part rather childish, though he would still plan on learning them eventually. Fortunately, the teacher was totally useless, and Harry could safely ignore him to work on more interesting things during class such as his continued studies into Ancient Runes.

And History of Magic was best of all. Not only did he not need to pay attention in class, but the ghost who taught the class apparently didn't even notice if you actively slept right in front of him. It was practically ideal.

Eventually Harry would probably just start sending Shadow Clones to those classes. There wasn't any point in him attending when he could be working towards greater (or any) control over his magic as well as the regular ongoing physical training he continued to put himself through.

So the only class left that he had yet to attend was Potions - a class which was quickly growing to near legendary levels in the minds of the first-years as the older students told them all about their own experiences with the infamous Professor Snape. Everyone else was quickly becoming rather terrified as the stories grew. Even Hermione seemed nervous when the topic came up.

Harry, on the other hand, was almost giddy with anticipation.

Apparently not only did Snape unreasonably dislike him for some unknown reason, he was also just generally a terrible teacher and thoroughly unpleasant person. Which was all the excuse Harry needed to move past minor petty pranks and really mess with the man.

The only problem was that Harry had to remind himself that he couldn't go _too_ hard on the poor guy. He hadn't really done anything significant to Harry yet at this point, and Harry always preferred to dish out well deserved justice with his pranks rather than preemptively target someone just because they were likely to do something stupid in the future. Unless it was _really_ funny. Then it was ok.

And more importantly, if Harry went all out on Snape, he highly doubted the man would last the year at Hogwarts. And that would be most unfortunate, because he was really looking forward to Snape being a source of entertainment for years to come.

Still, even limiting himself to a more reasonable level of vindictiveness for the time being...Tomorrow was going to be fun.

**A/N:**

Hermione definitely hasn't gotten over all of her various issues from just one talk with Harry, but this should be a good start. Probably almost half of the negative reviews I get for this story in some way deal with people not liking Hermione. Which I sort of understand. She can be pretty annoying, especially in the early books. I still like her though. She has some pretty serious issues, as any good character does, but she has a lot of good traits too. Introduce her to a Harry who will actually help her grow as a person instead of being totally spineless and just putting up with her absolute lack of any social skills and certainty that she is always right, and she has the potential to become a great character.

Not sure how well the mini time-skip went, but the chapters were moving through the plot slowly enough without covering every single class in detail. So next chapter will cover the first Friday of the school year, and then we will finally be a week into Harry's Hogwarts education! Why at this rate, I might reach his second week before I pass the total number of words in the entirety of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!

Finally, please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	11. Potions Class

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: There were a fair number of people who thought the section with the conversation between Harry and Hermione was boring. Unfortunately, while it probably could have been a little shorter, it was a necessary conversation to have if I want Harry and Hermione's friendship to work. And it won't be the last either, though it should be the longest. While I do strive to have a lot of humor in this story, it is not and will not be 100% humor based. There will be moments of seriousness and character development. And only then will we get back to the humor.

**Chapter 11 – Potions Class**

Harry was excited.

"I'm excited!" he exclaimed in a chipper voice, having decided that this was information the Gryffindors who surrounded him at the breakfast table should know. He really thought that they should be too, though their looks of incredulous shock were a strange way of showing it if so.

Of course he was used to people not being able to match his excitement - few people could when he got worked up. But Sakura had always said he should make sure to inform his friends when he got wound up like this. Something about giving them time to leave the country or something along those lines. He hadn't really been paying attention.

He supposed it was polite to give them a heads-up to watch out for the coming entertainment though, even if that probably wasn't what Sakura had meant.

"Err...Harry..." Ron hesitated, apparently not sure how to phrase his comment. But eventually he rushed ahead and said, "_No one_ gets excited about going to Potions. Well maybe the Snakes, but not Gryffindors. Did you _hear_ what the upper years were saying about his classes? I don't think that even the Claws actually look forward to Snape," he added with amazement.

"Well I will have you know that I am quite looking forward to it. Potions sounds like such a fascinating subject," Hermione commented with bright eyes, though the way she immediately returned to biting her lower lip conveyed she was clearly nervous as well.

"It's not the subject so much as who teaches it, Hermione," Ron responded with a tone of finality.

As one the eyes of the first year Gryffindors turned towards the head table, where fortunately Professor Snape wasn't glaring balefully at them, as seemed to be one of his favorite hobbies. Well glaring balefully at Harry. The rest of Gryffindor seemed to just be a bonus.

"Maybe he won't be so bad," Neville said hesitantly, though it was clear that he didn't actually believe it, and was likely the most frightened of the first years at the very idea of the quickly approaching class.

"Come on guys...It's going to be awesome!" Harry grinned with a slight sinister light in his eyes.

But before he could continue, one of the Weasley Twins leaned over to say, "Are you planning something Harry? Something to make..."

The other twin continued for him, "your first potions class a little more interesting,"

"Shall we say?" the first finished the question.

"Ohhh...You just"

"_have_ to take"

"pictures of his face"

"when you prank him." The two looked back at each other and grinned widely before looking back to Harry and continuing to finish the other's sentences. "I don't think anyone has ever"

"dared to prank Snape on the very _first _day"

"of their _first-_year classes."

"Prank him?" Harry asked with his very best innocent expression. "Why I would _never_ prank a professor, regardless of how awful he seems to be from what everyone says about him." He waited long enough to savor the Twin's crushed expressions, not to mention that of most of the rest of Gryffindor. Though Hermione at least seemed relieved.

"No, that would be wrong," he stated sanctimoniously. "On the other hand, I've always been a very lucky person. I mean a dark lord used a death-curse that never fails on me, and karma chose that exact moment to bitch-slap him for it." Ignoring the uncomfortable shifting at this comment, Harry continued to muse in a thoughtful tone, "I suppose it is _possible_ that should Professor Snape fail as a teacher to the extent you have described that karma might turn against him a bit as well. Perhaps even in amusing ways. That's how it often seems to work around me anyway. Through no fault of my own, of course."

The twins were back to grinning at this point, though Hermione was likewise back to chewing her lip nervously.

"Ah, yes," Twin one said with a knowing nod.

"Of course," the other agreed.

"And I guess I could possibly arrange to have some pictures taken should random happenstance fall into place in such a way. I don't have a camera though. Maybe if you let me borrow one?"

The twins quickly agreed with matching ominous smiles before they hurried off, presumably to obtain one. Hermione briefly looked like she wanted to say something, but she bit back her words and went back to eating hurriedly, though with the occasional sidelong meaningful glance in Harry's direction.

It didn't bother Harry though. The other Gryffindors at least were now considerably more excited about Potions class than before, which was certainly a good thing. Eleven year olds shouldn't dread the first class of the year like that. If Snape had to suffer a bit to relieve that fear for the students...Well, he shouldn't have been such a bastard to cause that kind of fear in the first place. Be a decent teacher or even just human being, and you don't experience pain and humiliation. Any animal could be learn a lesson like that, so he didn't see why the same couldn't work for Snape.

Before he could consider his plans in Snape-training any further, he noticed the distinctive white plumage of Hedwig swooping down in his direction carrying a letter. It was the first letter he had received since his arrival at Hogwarts, and Harry was a bit confused as to who might be sending him anything. But he took the time to give Hedwig a quick scratch on the head and feed her a strip of bacon before removing the letter and reading it.

_Dear Harry,_

_I know you get Friday afternoons off so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig._

_Hagrid._

Looking up from the letter, he glanced around at his friends as he asked, "Hey guys, Hagrid just invited me over this afternoon. Do any of you want to come along?"

Ron gave a grunt that could be interpreted as anything, his mouth too full for any actual words to be understood. Neville shrugged indifferently, but he agreed to come. Obviously he didn't particularly care other than it just being a reason to spend time with friends, something it appeared he still wasn't quite used to, but was eager to embrace.

Hermione though quickly got rather excited. "Oh! He was the one you said knew so much about rare magical creatures? I wonder if he can answer some questions I have. Some of the books I was reading were not very detailed. Of course I'm sure there are better ones in the library, but I just haven't had a chance to read very much about Magical Creatures. Such a fascinating subject, you know..."

Before she could continue her somewhat rambling exposition, Harry laughed and interrupted her. She had to have been running out of breath anyway, so it was only the polite thing to do. "Calm down Hermione. I'm sure he will answer whatever questions you have, and maybe he can point you in the right direction for some of the more interesting books too."

If anything, Hermione became even more excited at this, though Ron gave her a look of disgust as she began waxing on about what she might be able to learn. Harry just laughed again as he quickly wrote that they would come for tea that afternoon on the back of the letter and sent Hedwig back to Hagrid.

Maybe some people _could_ become as excited as he did, even if they chose strange things to base their excitement around.

* * *

><p>Potions took place down in the dungeons, which rumor had it was fairly close to the Slytherin common room. It made Harry pity the Slytherins at least a little bit. He would give it an eight for atmosphere, if the target atmosphere was ominous and slightly creepy, though that was probably in part due to the various animal body parts in the jars which lined the shelves along one wall.<p>

He wasn't sure _why_ ominous and creepy was the target atmosphere for a classroom, but there was no way this could be an accident. He had seen plenty of magical smokeless torches around the castle, so it wouldn't have been difficult to provide a reasonably cheery and bright room for the students. Instead, Snape appeared to prefer a few scattered candles which gave off a dim red glow barely sufficient for a normal person to see clearly. Not to mention it lost some overall points based on the classroom being highly dank and slightly chilly, even in the first week of September. And worst of all was the lack of any sort of ventilation.

While poisons had never been a particular specialty of his, like with virtually every other shinobi field of study, he had picked up a fairly strong knowledge in the subject over the centuries of his prior lifetime. Poisons weren't quite the same thing as Potions, but they seemed to share a similar basis in the same way that Seals shared a basis with Ancient Runes. So he knew that it probably wasn't a great idea to be breathing in random fumes of various bubbling magical substances.

It wasn't a problem for him, since he could use wind manipulation to filter anything out of the air he breathed, but the rest of the students were not so lucky. Though perhaps the magical world was simply unaware of such things? The modern non-magical world had only discovered the effects of things too small to see comparatively recently, and given how far behind the magical world seemed to lag, it was quite possible.

He would have to set up some hidden seals to filter the air in the room. In addition to it helping to protect his friends, it would probably also annoy Snape, since the man wouldn't understand what was causing it once he inevitably noticed the result.

But for now he was more focused on more immediate ways of annoying Snape. Principally the illusion he had already set up.

An illusion which activated as the man swept into the room with billowing robes and his typical sneer.

"There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class," the professor said as he took his first steps into the classroom. "As such, I don't expect..." he finally trailed off as he looked around noticed that something was definitely very wrong. Apparently he wasn't quite as absorbed in his clearly memorized speech as Harry had hoped. But it was all made worthwhile when his expression slowly transformed to one of profound confusion.

"What...Where?" He looked around, clearly baffled at his surroundings - a bafflement which began to spread to the other students who couldn't see anything wrong with the classroom.

At this point Snape's wand appeared out of his sleeve and he murmured a quiet, "_Tempus_," and looked over the glowing numbers which formed into the current time before looking back over the classroom with a still clearly confused expression.

"Err...Professor Snape?" Malfoy asked from the Slytherin side of the classroom in a tone indicating he was just as confused as Snape appeared to be, though clearly in his opinion for significantly better reason. "Are you alright?"

But Snape just ignored the young Slytherin as he continued to examine his surroundings before finally turning and slowly walking back towards the exit to the classroom.

It was Hermione who first grasped the basics of what was going on as she asked in a voice that wavered between horrified and accusatory, "What did you do to Professor Snape?" Or at least as much of those emotions as it was possible to inject into something quiet enough that it could barely even be called a whisper.

Harry was relatively certain that she wasn't going to buy his innocent act this time, especially as other Gryffindors nearby started to catch on and quiet chuckles spread in widening circles around Harry's seat. They might not have been sure exactly what was going on, but after the conversation at breakfast, he was relatively certain that even the more clueless Gryffindors knew he was responsible somehow.

Not that it mattered. No one could _prove_ anything at all.

And fortunately for Harry, he didn't have to respond to Hermione's question because Snape had reached the doorway and stuck his head outside of the classroom to look around. This caused the quiet questions of what exactly was wrong with Snape to rise in volume and provided an opportune excuse for Harry to ignore Hermione.

After a few seconds, the once again scowling professor drew his head back into the classroom, at which point Harry dropped the genjutsu he had earlier placed on the man.

The reaction was immediate. Snape turned around to face the inside of the classroom once more and gave a yelp which Harry was fairly certain was very unlike him as he leaped back, actually jumping into the hallway and almost falling over as he stumbled outside. This just caused more snickers from the Gryffindors, and greater confusion from the Slytherin.

But this didn't last long as Snape quickly strode back into the room, his robes billowing just as they had in his original entrance. Except this time rather than a haughty sneer, the man was openly furious.

The amusement which had spread across at least one side of the classroom quickly wilted under the man's expression as he scanned over the students until his gaze fell on Harry.

"_Potter_," Snape very nearly growled. "_You_ did this."

Harry already had an innocent expression prepared from Hermione's question of a handful of seconds ago, so all he did was widen his eyes even further, affecting being startled at the accusation. Hesitantly he asked the glaring man, "Umm...What do you mean, Professor Snape?"

"You made me not able to see you or any of the other students! It was just an empty room!" He paused long enough to sweep his fierce glower across the room, presumably to discourage any laughter before continuing, "Don't try and lie Potter. Just like your father to try and slip out of things even when you are obviously responsible. Thirty points from Gryffindor for doing such a thing to a professor."

"You can't see us?" Harry asked in amazement. He widened his eyes even further, now as wide as possible. He also added a very subtle genjutsu which made his eyes seem even wider – giving an almost unnaturally extreme impression of a wide-eyed child. "Oh, Professor Snape...Do you need help making it to the hospital ward? Maybe a potions accident or something like that? I certainly wouldn't know what would cause something like that. I'm just a first-year, after all."

Snape's nostrils flared and his clenched fists started to rise from his sides before he took a deep breath and regained his calm. When he finally spoke after a couple of silent seconds, his voice was frozen in the depth of its loathing, "Another thirty points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter, and detention. For a week, I think." He then whirled around and walked away, finally reaching the front of the class for the first time that morning. "We will see if you can learn a little respect in cleaning floors with Filtch. Not that I have high hopes for it."

It was only when Snape had turned away from him that Harry allowed his mouth to twitch up in amusement. Humiliation came in a lot of different flavors. The Weasley twins favored the more obvious kind – most frequently color changing charms on the Slytherin's robes or hair or something similar. It gave some quick laughs, but everyone could see exactly what happened, so really it was just some people who didn't like Slytherins being given an excuse to laugh at them.

But to make it appear that a man was going insane? Make his totally irrational hatred of an eleven year old readily apparent to the whole school based on something no one else even saw...It might take longer, especially as there were likely many fully willing to accept that Harry had done _something_, even if they were not sure what. Besides, even if all of the students knew Harry was responsible, that wouldn't be how Snape would see it. A man like that would only see the people laughing at him behind his back. And that was a deeper humiliation that struck at the heart of how Snape believed others saw him.

A man like that was well used to people fearing him. But laughing at him? Questioning his sanity, and witnessing him being bested by someone decades his junior? That would likely be a new and very unwelcome experience for the Potions Professor.

Though it was not so different from the effects of Snape's constant humiliations of the students supposedly under his care, really. Maybe Snape would figure it out eventually. Probably not though. The man was just too petty to ever allow himself to accept defeat in this sort of thing, much less actually accept responsibility and change his behavior. Though he expected that Snape's reaction once he learned that Harry truly didn't _care_ about any punishment he could possibly give would be the most painful of all.

After all, what did points or a House Cup mean to him? And detention could always be served by one of his shadow clones. He needed to leave the castle to continue his physical training frequently anyway, so there was a fair amount of time in which a clone would be taking his place. It didn't particularly matter to Harry if the clone was sitting around the common room or cleaning with Filtch. In many ways, detention was actually preferable, since he would rather spend time with his friends in person if possible.

Once Snape reached the front of the class, he whirled back around to face the students and quickly ran through the roll, clenching his teeth hard enough that it had to be painful as he ground out Harry's name. When Harry replied, "present" quite cheerfully, the grinding of the man's teeth was actually audible in the otherwise silent classroom.

After making it through the rest of the roll, Snape suddenly snapped out, "Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

"Oh, I have no idea, Professor. What would you get?" Harry asked with a bright inquisitive smile.

"You get a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death," Snape responded with his own twisted smile. As annoyed as Harry's unflappable expression clearly made the man, any chance to bring a little humiliation back to Harry was clearly welcome. "Perhaps if you were not such a dunderhead who relied upon your fame carrying you through life, you would know such a simple question.

"Well, maybe even someone as foolish as you might know this one," Snape continued. "Where would you find a bezoar?"

"Well, a bezoar is any mass found trapped in the stomach or intestines of an animal. Or human, I suppose. That's kind of gross though." Harry gave an exaggerated grimace.

But Snape just continued sneering with, if possible, even greater disdain. "Don't be a fool. That's the muggle definition, which was based on stories of real bezoar from before the Statute of Secrecy. A true bezoar is a stone which sometimes forms exclusively in the stomach of goats exposed to significant amounts of magic. It is an antidote to almost all poisons. You would know that if you had bothered to read the first three chapters of your book. I don't know why I would have expected someone like you to do that though."

"Oh, you really shouldn't have Professor Snape," Harry responded, back to his earlier carefree voice which was quite out of place in the dim castle dungeon, and especially out of place before Snape's angry expression. "This is the very first day of Potions class. So we haven't had any assigned reading yet. Of course I haven't read the first few chapters. That's alright though. I'm sure I will read all about bezoars this weekend. They sound fascinating!"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter," Snape barked out immediately after Harry finished speaking. "And you should have known to read ahead of time. It is called preparing for class. Something I'm sure you know nothing about. But your fame won't get you automatic good grades _here_."

The other students, Gryffindor and Slytherin alike, were staring back and forth from Harry to Professor Snape in something akin to awe by now. The Slytherins might not like Harry Potter, but it seemed even they could recognize how unusual it was for someone to speak to Snape like this. And while the Gryffindors would probably later be annoyed at all the points Harry was losing them, for now they instinctively knew that a confrontation like this didn't happen just every day. Or at least it didn't before Harry's arrival at Hogwarts. Still, they knew they should be grateful for the opportunity to bear witness to something which might come to be a legend of Hogwarts. Or at least gossip for the next few weeks.

"Thanks for the help, Professor Snape!" Harry exclaimed with mild excitement. "You should really put that into the initial letters though. There wasn't any indication anywhere that we are supposed to begin reading over the summer before we come to Hogwarts. I bet you would get fewer dunderheads if you told us what was expected of us ahead of time, you know?"

"That's another ten points from Gryffindor for that, Potter," Snape scoffed in response. "I suppose some people truly are incapable of learning. Now, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

"Well both of those are the same type of plant. Shouldn't you know that?" Harry asked in an inquisitive tone, attempting to make it sound like an innocent question, even though it clearly wasn't. But he didn't give Snape enough time to respond as he continued, "Both are common names given to the Aconitum genus of flowering plants. They are also known as aconite, devil's helmet, and blue rocket. It also makes a rather potent poison, which is where it gets most of its names. Shouldn't you be teaching this though? This is the first day of class. My understanding was that professors were supposed to teach us stuff before we were required to know it."

This long and rather detailed answer to his question actually caused Snape to freeze for a few seconds as he blinked back at Harry in shock before he gathered himself and responded angrily, "Don't question your professors. That will be another thirty points from Gryffindor. Do you really think that you are too good to learn Potions just because you are the _Boy-Who-Lived_?"

"Oh, it isn't that I think I am too good for it," Harry replied with a pleased grin. "It's just that I am never going to actually need to know it." He held up a hand as if to give him time to continue, as if that would have actually stopped Snape's reaction if the man hadn't been too surprised to formulate a response quite yet. "Of course I'm not saying that _no one_ should learn potions. Some people have to make them. It should just be an elective like Arithmancy. Most of us can just buy whatever potions we need, so we don't have to actually know how to make them. From what I saw in Diagon Alley, the basic potions don't really cost much more than the cost of the ingredients anyway, which makes sense because they are easy and quick. And the difficult ones are not safe if you don't have a Potions Master to make them. So learning potions is pretty pointless for anyone who isn't going to become a Potions Master.

"I'm sure you agree," Harry stated with a shrug as if it was a foregone conclusion.

"No, _I do not agree_," Snape very nearly yelled in an outraged voice. His hands once again clenched around the edges of his desk. "Potions is a noble art, and just because you are too _incompetent_ to manage it doesn't mean no one should even try. And that will be another fifty points from Gryffindor. And another week of detention." Snape gave him another glare at this point, though Harry wasn't sure what this was supposed to accomplish, since he had been glaring more or less continuously since class began.

"But what did I do wrong, Professor Snape?" Harry asked, returning to his earlier innocent expression. "I was just answering the question you asked. Do we get detentions for answering questions incorrectly? I'm sure Professor McGonagall would have mentioned something like that."

"You lost points and received detention because of your lack of respect and outright insults," Snape snarled. "I doubt you are capable of learning respect, _Potter_, but as your teacher, I shall do my best."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry Professor Snape. I certainly didn't mean anything like that. I deeply apologize for any insult I might have given on accident." Harry then smiled sweetly at the man. Which he knew would only infuriate him further.

And he was proven correct as the wood of the desk Snape continued to grip creaked audibly. But Snape didn't respond, perhaps aware that even the Slytherins would likely think he was insane if he started yelling at Harry for daring to humbly apologize. The fact that both Harry and Snape clearly knew that the apology was totally insincere wasn't really relevant.

So the professor tore his gaze away from Harry with visible difficulty and gestured to the board at the front of the class as he gave instructions to the class of children who seemed to have just as much trouble shifting their attention from the drama, if it could be called that, which had taken place in front of them moments before. "The instructions for the boil-cure potion are on the board. Complete the potion by the end of class."

The man then spent the rest of the class returning to an almost continuous glare focused on Harry with laser-like intensity.

Harry didn't mind though. It meant that Snape didn't miss all the little things like the fact that Harry prepared a perfect potion. Which wasn't difficult for him, with all of his various advantages. It probably wouldn't help him if he ever wanted to become a Potions Master and actually make original potions, which based on what he had been able to gather seemed to require an exhaustive understanding of potions ingredient reactions and an innate feel for the potions themselves. But for the comparatively simplistic potions taught at Hogwarts, all that was really required was following very precise instructions.

And precision was something he could do _extremely _well. With the Sharingan, he could actually see the magic of the ingredients, so when the instructions said to put half of a slug in, he could tell much more precisely how much he actually needed to put into the potion by comparing how much magic was in the various slugs to work out an average and include only the correct amount to make the potion perfect. He also had hand-eye coordination which would probably be considered supernatural, so dicing ingredients into _exact_ eighths, or stirring _exactly_ thirteen and a half rotations were all easily accomplished.

Snape clearly didn't like the fact that he was apparently very talented at potions. Especially in light of his earlier dismissal of the subject as something not worthy of his interest. Of course the man didn't seem to like _anything_ Harry did by now. Even the few things he did in class that were not aimed at further aggravating Snape such as helping some of his fellow Gryffindors avoid mistakes with their potions were met with a swift loss of further points. Apparently that was 'disruptive'.

Harry made sure to place another genjutsu on him so that Snape, and only Snape, would hear a cheerful humming coming from Harry for that one. It lost yet more points that Harry didn't care about and made Snape look like a lunatic yet again when he insisted that Harry stop. So a solid win in Harry's view. Best of all, it would probably take until one of the Slytherins pointed it out for Snape to begin to understand what happened. It was nice to know he could infuriate the man even when Harry wasn't nearby.

But for the most part, he let the rest of the class pass in relative peace. He didn't want to push Snape _too_ far after all, though with Snape's near continuous absurd level of abuse for a teacher towards a student, Harry found it hard to hold back. But for now, he was happy with keeping things at a low simmer with his obnoxiously high degree of skill at brewing.

Unfortunately, eventually the exceedingly entertaining class came to an end though as Snape called out, "Everyone bottle and label a sample of your potion to be graded and clean out your cauldrons. Class is over."

The resulting rush of students seemed especially eager to get out at that point. Though Harry didn't really blame them. If he had truly been eleven years old, he probably would have equally quick to get away from the glare which hadn't left Snape's face for more than a handful of seconds for the entire double period. Even if that glare was rarely directed at any of them. And Harry's bright smile in response to that glare seemed to disturb at least the Slytherins to an almost equal degree.

So Harry let them rush ahead as he carefully bottled and labeled a sample of his perfect boil-cure potion to take to the front of the classroom behind most of the other students. In fact, only Hermione, Ron, and Neville were hanging back at this point, though each of them stayed well back and looked quite nervous even so.

So when Harry placed his potion on the front table, not even Hermione seemed particularly shocked when Snape 'accidentally' brushed his robe's sleeve across the potion sample to knock it off the table and shatter it on the ground. Apparently not even her general faith in authority figures could quite stand up to the level of mistreatment a Snape had exhibited that day, though how long that would last was anyone's guess.

Harry just smiled even more widely though. Well, smiled and seallessly activated a modified Replacement technique to switch the falling bottle with another from the desk.

"How unfortunate, Potter," Snape sneered with what was the first expression that morning that could really be called a smile as he spoke in a satisfied voice. "It seems you have no potion to be turned in. I suppose I will have to give you a zero. And I think another twenty points from Gryffindor for failing to turn in a potion sample as instructed."

"You know, I don't actually think Gryffindor _has_ any points to take by this point," Harry mused. He then bent over and picked up the shard of glass from the ground which held the label, which he held out to Snape as he called out, "Besides, this one was Malfoy's. See?"

"What?" Snape practically screeched. "No, that's impossible!" he exclaimed as he grabbed the label which clearly read 'Draco Malfoy'.

"Yeah, that's pretty unfortunate," Harry replied in a vaguely sympathetic tone. "Too bad he has to get a zero though. His seemed almost as close to the exact right shade the book describes as mine was. I would think he would get a chance to make a replacement potion, but I guess if that is what your rule is, he will just have to live with it. And I suppose the Slytherins can afford losing that twenty points better than Gryffindor after this morning..." Harry gave a casual shrug as he trailed off meaningfully.

But Snape apparently didn't find this as amusing as Harry did, as he dropped Malfoy's label back onto the ground and seized a handful of Harry's robes to yank him forward. If Harry had been a normal eleven year old, it probably would have pulled him off his feet, but he found it easy enough to keep up with Snape.

"_Potter_," he snarled, with his face even more twisted with blatant hatred than his normal expression. "I'll see you expelled for this."

"For what, Professor Snape?" Harry asked with mild curiosity.

"For academic sabotage. For cheating, insults to a professor, and deliberate incitement of other students. _Pick one_," he spat. Literally spat, as Harry had to shift his head to avoid the spittle.

"Oh, that's too bad." Harry nodded sympathetically to Snape before looking over his shoulder at his friends, who were still standing at the entrance to the Potions classroom looking at Harry with mouths gaping in shock and horror. "I'll see you guys at lunch in a little bit," he called out to them with a casual wave behind him in their direction. "I guess I have to talk to Professor Dumbledore for a little while first though."

Snape just snarled again, and yanked harder on the handful of Harry's robes he held clutched in his fist while Hermione, Neville, and Ron continued to stare after him silently.

**A/N:**

I almost put Snape's normal introduction speech in there somewhere. It really does catch Snape's character quite well. But since things changed quite a bit as soon as class started, it is unlikely he would continue with his normal script. Not to mention that it shows up in pretty much every Harry Potter fanfic in existence, so people have probably seen it even more often than the Sorting Hat's song.

Harry's description of a bezoar is correct in real life, by the way. It's a word JKR took for use in the magical world rather than making something up. Not a commonly used word, but Harry would know it. The same is true for the monkshood and wolfsbane question, which Harry is even more likely to know, given its uses as a poison.

And yes, I realize that some of Snape's comments and actions are more extreme than in canon, but given that it is probably only Snape's Occlumency that is preventing him from losing control and attacking the kid, it seems reasonable. After all, Snape gave continuous scorn to Harry when Harry did nothing at all. When Harry is actively baiting the guy? Yeah, their relationship is going to be even worse than in canon. Not because I am trying to bash Snape or anything like that, but because that is how I see canon!Snape reacting to a very different Harry like this one. In canon, Snape constantly thought of Harry as exactly the same as his father. It's a ridiculous accusation with absolutely no evidence to support it, but here, it really _is_ fairly true. Except this Harry is far more audacious than James Potter ever was.

Finally, please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


	12. Whats a Little Defiance Between Friends

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

**A/N**: I would like to thank everyone for their continued support. The number of reviews, follows, and favorites this story has gained in so few chapters continues to astound me and surpass my greatest hopes for this story. If someone had told me I would have over 2,100 reviews with eleven chapters posted when I started this story, I would have told them they were insane. So thank you to everyone who has read this story, and even more to those who take the time to review.

**Chapter 12 – What's a Little Defiance Between Friends?**

Snape physically dragging Harry through the corridors of Hogwarts drew quite a bit of attention. The last morning class had let out just moments before and everyone was headed to lunch, so quite a few people were still loitering along the path the Potions Professor took from the dungeons to the base of the Headmaster's Tower.

Snape didn't seem to care though. Neither did Harry. More witnesses meant more people interested in the Potions class Harry had just attended, which in turn meant more people to hear about the man's humiliation and to soon witness his impotence against Harry. Because if Snape really believed that Dumbledore was going to expel the Boy-Who-Lived on the very first week of classes based on mild back-talk and some pranks which could have been committed by anyone, he was truly delusional.

That was what anger did though. It made people stupid. And Harry had worked rather hard over the past couple hours to put Snape into that exact state, though it wouldn't have been nearly as effective if Snape hadn't been predisposed to hate Harry on principle and blame everything on him.

Harry still wasn't sure _why_ Snape reacted to him that way, but he was fully prepared to use it for his own amusement.

Regardless of why, Snape seemed content to stride through the hallways in a fuming silence, and Harry left him to it. The occasional cheerful smile and energetic wave from Harry whenever they passed someone he knew probably didn't help Snape calm down.

Eventually they reached a large stone gargoyle which stood in front of the winding staircase presumably leading up to the Headmaster's Office.

Snape barely even slowed down. As they approached the statue, he growled out, "Ice Mice."

The gargoyle then leapt aside, though Harry wasn't quite sure if the speed it moved out of the way was normal or if it realized that Snape wasn't going to slow down if it didn't move out of the way fast enough. And the hand that wasn't gripping Harry's robes to drag him along was fondling his wand, probably itching for something to dare to get in his way to give him an excuse to unleash some of his aggravation.

Either way, the gargoyle apparently didn't want to find out exactly what Snape intended, and had moved away from its position guarding the stairs well before they arrived, even at their fast pace. A pace which didn't slow down at all as they made their way up the stairs, apparently towards the Headmasters Office.

Once they made their way up the winding staircase, Snape gave a single knock at the door and waited just long enough to hear Professor Dumbledore begin answering, though not long enough to hear what he was saying, before pushing the door open and entering along with a bemused Harry.

"Come in Sev..." Dumbledore trailed off with one long droopy white eyebrow raised. Eventually he continued after having looked over the two of them, who came to a stop in front of his desk. "Please, come in and have a seat. Would either of you like a lemon drop?" He gave a kindly smile as he held out a bowl full of the yellow candies.

Snape gave a rather waspish "No" and dropped into one of the seats, giving a push that was rather harder than strictly necessary to Harry towards another.

Fortunately, Harry was quite significantly stronger than Snape, so he ignored the man's push and gleefully scooped out a small handful of candy from the offered bowl. Popping two into his mouth, he replied with a voice only slightly garbled by two hard candies he was now sucking on, "Thanks Professor Dumbledore."

The slight pressure against his mindwalking shields told him that the candies were apparently dosed with some sort of mind-altering potion. Most likely either a mild calming potion or possibly a minor truth potion. Not that Harry could blame the man. If he had access to that sort of thing in his previous life, he probably would have dosed all of his visitors too. Though he doubted something this weak would do anything against the disciplined mind of a well-trained ninja even without his mindwalking shields, but every little bit helped.

"So, what seems to be the problem?" Professor Dumbledore asked with a cheerful twinkle in his eye and a small amused smile as he settled down into his own rather plush chair.

"This…" Snape growled angrily before trailing off, apparently trying to find a way to describe Harry in a way appropriate for his current mood, and yet polite enough to not get him in trouble with the Headmaster.

Harry gave the seething man a cheerful smile and slurped rather loudly on his candies.

"This _boy_," Snape eventually continued with a snarl, "pranked me in the middle of the classroom, talked back to me throughout the lesson, and deliberately sabotaged another student's finished potion."

The Headmaster leaned back behind his desk, with eyes widening to show his surprise as he looked over to Harry from Snape. He then opened his mouth to respond. Probably either to ask for some clarification or perhaps to comment on Harry's continued happy grin in the face of Snape's rather severe accusations.

However he didn't get a chance to say anything as the irate Potions Professor continued his rant. "I _told_ you this would happen, Albus. I _told_ you he would come here with a swelled head, thinking he could get away with anything just because he's famous. I _told_ you he would be as bad as his father. No, _worse_ than his father. Not even Potter would have dared pranking a teacher on the very first day of his first year. I told you he should never have been here. I _told_ you, but you didn't listen. Well, now you can correct your mistake and throw him out!"

Professor Dumbledore gave Snape a few moments to make sure he was done before he turned with a far graver expression than he had earlier shown and looked at Harry. At which point the man's eyebrow once again quirked up in surprise and he asked, "You seem quite accepting of this turn of events. Do you understand that you are in quite a bit of trouble, Mr. Potter?"

"Sure, I guess so," Harry responded, still smiling. "These candies are just _so_ good. I don't think anyone could eat them and not smile."

A pleased smile appeared on Professor Dumbledore's face along with the return of the twinkle in his eye as he reached over and plucked one of the lemon drops from the bowl and popped it into his own mouth. "Ah, I quite agree, Harry. Most people refuse one when I offer, which I haven't ever understood. I'm quite glad that you see the joy such a simple little thing can bring. Regardless of whatever else is going on in the world, you can always rely on a lemon drop to remind you of the simpler, happier things. Why, once, when I was younger..."

It seemed that the aged Headmaster wasn't paying attention to Snape as he began to wonder over the marvel that was the Lemon Drop. Harry, however, had been watching the man as his glare became harsher, his white-knuckled grip on his armrests tighter, and his grinding teeth louder the longer Professor Dumbledore continued. In fact, Harry was beginning to have trouble maintaining his bright and innocent smile and not breaking out into laughter.

He didn't know if the Headmaster was just a bit senile, truly did love lemon drops that much, or if the man was actually going along with Harry's attempts to nettle Snape. Regardless, it was among the most amusing things he had seen in what had already been a very entertaining day.

But finally Snape could apparently take no more and burst out, "Enough, Albus! No one cares about your unnatural love of a piece of candy! We are here to discuss Potter's punishment."

Professor Dumbledore cleared his throat and stated in a far more serious tone, "Yes, of course." Turning back to Harry, he continued, "Mr. Potter, Professor Snape has had some very bad things to say about your actions in today's Potions class. Can you explain your behavior to us?"

"Oh, you mean all that stuff with the prank, backtalk, and potions sabotage Professor Snape was talking about?" Harry waited for Professor Dumbledore to nod his head before popping another lemon drop into his mouth and continuing, "Yeah, I didn't do any of that."

Snape immediately straightened in his chair and turned the full strength of his glare onto Harry, not that it had often left him for the duration of this meeting. "_Potter_! Why you lying little..."

Before Snape could get any further, Professor Dumbledore cut him off with a rather sharp reprimand for the apparently generally easygoing elderly man. "That's enough Severus." The Headmaster then turned to Harry and continued in a gentler tone, "Can you please explain what happened from your perspective, Harry?"

"Sure Professor," Harry answered with a nod. "Professor Snape was acting kind of weird when he first walked into the room at the beginning of the class. He looked around with an odd expression, then walked out of the room while ignoring everyone's questions. But he seemed ok after that. No one seemed to really know what happened though. Then I answered some of his questions, explaining my views when he asked, but I certainly didn't do any backtalk, or not on purpose anyway. And I don't even know what he is talking about with sabotaging another student's potion."

Professor Dumbledore sighed and leaned back in his chair at this before turning to Snape. "Severus, if you could explain your accusations in a bit more detail, please?"

Snape continued glaring at Harry for another long moment before he turned, now facing Professor Dumbledore as he answered in a voice filled with forced calm clearly barely holding his rage at bay, "When I first entered the classroom, it appeared to me that none of the students were in the class. As I entered exactly on time for the class to start, this was highly unusual, so after a few moments, I left the room to make certain the students were not loitering in the hallways. As soon as I stepped outside, I was suddenly able to hear the students in the classroom, and see them as I looked back. It was clearly an attempt by Potter to make me look foolish in front of my students."

Snape then took a deep breath, clenching his hands around the chair's armrests briefly once again as he gave a brief glare in Harry's direction before continuing, "He then proceeded to spend the rest of the class answering my questions with a total lack of respect, openly questioning the validity of Potions as a subject and dismissing my attempts to censure his behavior, or even give him point deductions or detentions. Then finally, when his own potion was knocked off the table, he used a switching charm of some kind to replace his falling potion with Draco Malfoy's, shattering it on the ground."

"Do you have any actual evidence I was responsible for that prank?" Harry asked incredulously. This time he didn't wait for the Headmaster to prompt his response. "It sounds like some sort of powerful targeted notice-me-not spell, but I wouldn't have any idea how to actually cast something like that. I'm just a new first-year, after all."

Snape turned to Harry as he spoke and returned in what was apparently his customary snarl, "You could have hired someone else to set up the spells. How would a dunderhead like you even know what a targeted notice-me-not is otherwise?"

"Once again, do you have any _evidence_ that I was responsible?" Harry asked with just a twitch of a smile. "Even if this was a prank, it could've been anyone. And I know of that spell because I was reading a book about Ancient Runes that mentioned something similar is often included in defensive ward set-ups. It didn't describe how such a thing would actually be performed though. It's just an introductory book, after all."

"I know it was you Potter!" Snape exclaimed, leaning forward in his chair as if he was preparing to stand - probably to attempt to throttle him or something similar, given his expression. "Just like your father, you wanted to humiliate me in front of everyone! Well, it won't work this time."

"Severus, please calm yourself and remain silent until Harry has had a chance to explain himself," Albus interrupted, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance, or perhaps with the onset of a headache.

Harry could see how regular dealing with Snape could cause a headache for anyone. The thought set off a surge of pity for the old man, having to put up with someone like Snape and _not_ prank the daylights out of him. Professionalism could be pretty boring. Not that Harry would know from personal experience. It sure _seemed_ boring though.

But maybe his own pranks towards Snape would help the Headmaster feel better by proxy. Surely anyone who had to spend any amount of time with Snape would _wish_ they could prank the man, even if they felt bound by the responsibilities of their position to not go through with it.

"Umm...Anyway, that's all I know about the prank," Harry continued. "For the backtalk, I was just answering his questions. Actually, on that subject, I really think I should present my idea to you. I think what upset Professor Snape was that I suggested that Potions wasn't really necessary for most students to learn, since most of us don't ever really need to use it again after graduation. So I was thinking that you could create a cooking class for the first two years. It would teach pretty much the same thing – careful ingredient preparation and how to follow a recipe correctly.

"But cooking is something everyone will need someday, unlike making potions," Harry said with a grin as he popped another lemon drop into his mouth, careful to watch as Snape's face turned a darker and darker red, bordering on purple. "And for those who are interested in going into professional potions brewing, they can take Potions as an elective, and the rest of us can replace it with something we will actually need in our lives after graduation!"

Professor Dumbledore appeared thoughtful at that, though he did seem to be periodically glancing at the shade of Snape's face with some concern. Eventually the old man responded with eyes twinkling once again, "That's an interesting idea, Harry my boy. Certainly it is something to be considered, anyway. I suppose I can understand how such a...revolutionary idea might not be taken well by Severus. But for now, what about the last issue Severus raised?"

Harry nodded, giving a slightly confused expression as he answered, "Well I'm not sure about that one. I wasn't really watching closely, but it did seem like the bottle Snape knocked off the table was the one I submitted. I guess I just really hoped that my potion wouldn't break. I thought the potion turned out pretty well, and I didn't want to lose my work like that. So I suppose it's possible that I did some accidental magic to do a...switching charm, I think Professor Snape called it? I didn't mean to mess anyone else's potion up though. I didn't really mean to do anything at all. I mean I didn't have my wand out or anything, so I don't see why anyone would think it was purposeful magic even if I knew how to perform a switching charm. Can we get in trouble for accidental magic even though we didn't mean to do it?"

At this point Harry turned on his most innocent expression – eyes wide with just a hint of worry mixed in. Professor Dumbledore probably wouldn't really buy it, but it would further infuriate Snape. And the Headmaster had seemed content to go along with Harry's nettling of Snape so far today. Especially since Professor Dumbledore might have hidden it quickly, but Harry had seen the flash of true annoyance at Snape when he mentioned Snape being the one to knock his potion off the table in passing. Clearly the man knew Snape had been trying to destroy Harry's potion as well as he did.

But Professor Dumbledore didn't mention it any more than Harry did. There wasn't much point, since all three knew the truth, but no evidence existed to prove Snape's actions had been purposeful any more than any existed to prove Harry's actions had been purposeful.

Instead the Headmaster's brow creased beyond its normal wrinkles as he leaned back in his chair, apparently thinking deeply, before turning to Snape to say, "Perhaps it would be best to review the memories of the events in question to clarify things. Clearly your perspectives on this matter are a bit different, so an unbiased reviewing of these events might help for both of us."

Snape seemed annoyed at this, but grudgingly nodded before Harry asked, "Wait...what do you mean by review the memories? You can use magic to show people your memories?"

"Ah, yes Harry, my boy," Dumbledore answered with a smile and a bright twinkle in his eye as he looked back at Harry. "A most marvelous magical device called a Pensieve allows us to extract our memories and watch them once again ourselves, or share them with others. It's most useful in keeping your thoughts organized and reviewing old memories for details which might have been forgotten by the conscious mind. It is especially helpful at my age. Old men such as myself need as much help as we can get to keep up with all of the memories filling our heads."

Harry gave a thoughtful nod at this. That did seem extremely useful. There wasn't always time for such a careful review, but if this device really did allow the perfect capture of every detail of a memory, there were any number of times in which reviewing memory for the details which were missed while in the moment could be extremely important. Even the Sharingan wasn't a perfect substitute, as it recorded only visuals.

"Could I provide my own memories to perhaps show my side of things a bit better than what Professor Snape remembers?" Harry asked. He would need to be careful of exactly which memories he supplied, but it shouldn't be difficult to give memories which showed the entire period in question without anything incriminating appearing. None of what he had done in that classroom had required handsigns, so there had been no visible sign of him doing anything at all.

But this line of thought was interrupted as Professor Dumbledore answered, "Unfortunately, because you are a Natural Occlumens, you won't be able to directly use a Pensieve, Harry. You see, the defense of a Natural Occlumens is so absolute that nothing can get in or out of such a mind. This means you cannot give memories for a Pensieve, nor can you connect your mind with one to directly view memories, since this involves the Pensieve magically inserting the memory into your mind. Some Pensieves do have a projection function that creates a physical image of the memory which you could watch, but this is substantially less detailed than the immersive experience of entering a Pensieve."

Harry frowned at that. Of course this restriction didn't actually apply to him, since he wasn't truly a Natural Occlumens. But he couldn't exactly explain that he used chakra to create immensely powerful mindwalking walls, which he could drop part or all of at any time if he wished. So for now he would have to go along with the restrictions a Natural Occlumens apparently operated under. It was too convenient an explanation to give up easily.

"Are there any other negatives to being a Natural Occlumens, Professor Dumbledore?" He asked, content to continue to ignore the silently brooding Snape. Though the fact that the man did appear to have calmed himself somewhat was a little disappointing. Still, this was more important for now.

"Oh, I suppose there are a few," the Headmaster answered. "Mostly in not receiving some of the benefits available to a true master of Occlumency. For example, a master of Occlumency can project false thoughts, tricking a Legillimencer into the belief that the Occlumens mental walls had been breached and they were seeing their true thoughts. There are also some spells or potions that can be medically beneficial such as a cheering charm or calming drought which can affect a Natural Occlumens no more than any other magical mental effect. Most agree that the benefits far outweigh the negatives though. First that you have no need to put the time and effort of studying a complex and difficult magical art such as a normal Occlumens would. And more importantly, any normal Occlumens, no matter how skilled, can potentially have their Occlumency barriers eventually breached. A Natural Occlumens has no such fear, regardless of the power or subtlety of the mental spell or potion."

Harry nodded before giving a brief shrug and popping his last lemon drop into his mouth. "Well, nothing I can do about it one way or the other, so there isn't really any point worrying about it, I guess."

Professor Dumbledore gave a gentle smile at this and nodded his agreement as he responded, "That's a very mature way of looking at it, my boy. It's never helpful to waste time fretting about what cannot be changed. Better to focus on the things you can do to improve yourself and help others." He then turned to Snape and requested, "I suppose it is time to view those memories and decide what needs to be done about this little issue though."

Snape nodded and the two men stood to walk over to a locked drawer, from which a large shallow bowl covered in complicated runes was removed. As always, the runes fascinated Harry, and he made sure his Sharingan recorded as much of the surface of the bowl as was exposed to him from his position. Such complicated runes might be far beyond his current understanding of Ancient Runes, but the Sharingan would keep the image recorded until he was ready to review it once again with a greater understanding of the subject.

Once the bowl was placed on the Headmaster's desk, Snape pulled his wand out and placed the tip against his temple, slowly pulling it away with a strange silvery substance which followed after Snape's wand like guided mist. He then deposited the silvery substance into the Pensieve and repeated the process several additional times before both men dunked their heads directly into the shifting thick silver mist which filled the bowl.

The next few minutes were disappointingly boring. Both men remained unmoving, and though there were many unusual and potentially interesting items filling Professor Dumbledore's office, there were far too many magical paintings watching him to allow for any sort of experimentation. So after using his Sharingan to memorize a perfect picture of everything in the room, he was at a bit of a loss of what else he could do. Another prank on Snape might be interesting, but he didn't want to push things too far this early, and he couldn't be _too_ obvious right in front of Professor Dumbledore. Even if the man was somewhat sympathetic, his professionalism would probably prevent him from letting Harry get away with being too blatant.

So instead, after a brief stop at the candy bowl to refill, he dropped into the Headmaster's extremely comfortably chair behind the oversized desk and settled back into the ample cushions for a kip.

* * *

><p>Albus almost burst out with a chuckle when he emerged from the Pensieve to find young Harry asleep in his own chair. That level of confidence, or perhaps simply not caring what anyone else thought would make his own plans somewhat more difficult. But he had to shake his head in wonder at an eleven year old who was not only willing to steal the chair of the Headmaster of his school while said Headmaster was less than ten feet away, but who was so unconcerned in such circumstances he could actually fall asleep.<p>

Though Severus seemed unable to find the humor in the situation, to Albus' complete lack of surprise.

"Potter," the man snarled. "Get out of that chair you presumptuous little..."

Albus almost sighed audibly as he once again had to interrupt to prevent Severus from saying something he really shouldn't to a child. Any child really, but most especially not _this_ child.

But instead of sighing, he cut in before Severus could finish whatever he had been intending to say. "Harry, my boy. You slept well, I hope?" he asked with a grandfatherly smile. "That chair really is quite comfortable, though I seldom find myself with the time to do the same."

As Albus had mostly expected, Harry gave a carefree yawn and stretch before smiling brightly at the two, in spite of Severus' glare, and replied, "Oh yeah, this is one of the most comfortable chairs I've ever found. I might have to come borrow it some time."

"Well unfortunately," Albus responded, "these old bones do need a chair like that one. But perhaps you can find another similarly comfortable chair for yourself eventually." A little deprecating humor could help him connect with the boy, and perhaps more importantly, Albus suspected that Harry might truly steal the chair as a prank if he didn't draw out a bit of pity. And he was beginning to think that Harry might be successful in such an attempt. Best not to tempt fate.

Harry just shrugged and stood to move out of the way, motioning for Albus to take his own chair back.

Albus wasted no time in reclaiming his seat, and waited only long enough for the other two to take their original chairs once again before clearing his throat and saying, "comfortable chairs aside, it would be best to address the issue at hand."

Receiving nods all around, he continued, "I've reviewed the pertinent memories, and you are correct that there isn't any evidence of active wrong-doing on your part, Harry. And of course we don't punish accidental magic here. You could've perhaps been a bit more respectful in your responses to the questions you were asked, but Severus clearly overreacted with many of his point deductions and assignments of detentions. I think a loss of five points in total for the class is appropriate for minor lack of respect, with no detentions."

Harry smiled in response to this, though Dumbledore thought he might have also smiled if he had been told the point loss and detentions would stand, given his earlier reactions. Severus on the other hand started sputtering in outrage, but was silenced with a quick look, for now at least.

And once Severus quieted down, Harry responded, "Sure, that sounds fine. Though it doesn't really matter much. I wasn't going to go to the detentions anyway, and I don't really care much about points."

Severus' glare intensified somehow at this, but Albus just raised an eyebrow and said, "Well you do have to go to any detentions assigned. You can't just skip them because you don't like detentions." He then gave a small smile and pushed a touch of magic into his eyes for the usual twinkle as he continued, "I don't think anyone would attend their detentions if that were the case."

"Oh, no Professor Dumbledore," Harry replied. "It doesn't have anything to do with not liking detention. I'm sure detention with Mr. Filtch would have been plenty of fun." The fact that this was said with a straight face was almost as surprising as Harry's other actions today, but Albus was given no time to dwell on it as Harry continued speaking as if his appreciation for detentions with Argus was unimportant, "But if you don't have any evidence that I did anything wrong, it isn't right to give me detentions, so I wasn't going to go."

Albus allowed the small frown of a grandfather disappointed in the actions of a cherished grandchild to emerge at this statement. "Well Harry, I can assure you that this is not the usual way things are done. Professors only give detentions when they feel there is a deliberate breaking of a rule, and unlike the loss of house points, all assignments of detention go to the Head of your House for review before the detention is served. You will have to serve any detentions that are assigned to you though. The consequences for ignoring assigned detentions can be quite severe, even up to expulsion for repeated offenses."

Though Albus didn't mention that while detentions were technically reviewed by the student's Head of House, they were almost never overruled. Doing so was seen as weakening the authority of the other professors in the eyes of the students, and only Pomona, ever defensive of her Hufflepuffs, had done so at all in recent years. Still, the rule's existence did generally keep Severus' bias mostly contained to just taking points.

But whether Harry knew this or not didn't really seem to matter as the boy answered in an unconcerned voice, "Well if your system for detentions works, it isn't really a problem. I will be happy to serve any detention assigned for good cause, but I won't serve a detention just because a professor, as you said, 'overreacted' and jumped the conclusion of my guilt for something anyone could have done. And as for being expelled, well I really don't think the Board of Governors or the general public would be pleased with seeing me expelled because I didn't attend a detention that I didn't deserve in the first place. But I guess if it came to that, I'm sure Beauxbatons or Durmstrang would be happy to have me."

At this Severus could no longer remain silent, in spite of Albus' repeated attempts to warn him not to respond in anger. Though Albus hadn't really expected Harry to push back quite this hard, even given his earlier clear disregard for authority.

"Are you _threatening_ us, Potter," Severus growled as he leaned towards Harry. "You will do as you are told or..."

Not even Albus was quite sure what Severus thought would happen if Harry continued his present defiance. In fact, he doubted Severus knew, as angry as the man was, but Albus couldn't afford to let him make a threat which couldn't be backed up.

"Severus, calm yourself," he stated in a kindly voice, with just a hint of steel beneath the surface. "I think it is clear that young Harry didn't mean that as a threat, but just to inform us that he was aware of the many safeguards in place to keep the system of punishments used at Hogwarts as fair and reasonable as they were originally intended."

And just as Albus had expected, Harry responded with a bright smile as he said, "Oh, of course Professor Dumbledore. I would never threaten a professor, and I know that a school as great as this one would never allow unjust punishments to be put on an undeserving child."

How the boy said all of that with a straight face, Albus would never understand, but he did appreciate Harry's willingness to play along with the polite fiction they were both spewing. Harry even seemed genuinely happy about it, as if he believed that just because he was threatening them with a public scandal was no reason they couldn't be friendly and respectful.

All of this passed through Albus' mind in an instant. He would spend more time contemplating these new developments later, but for now he just gave the boy a twinkling smile and nodded as he said, "Quite right, my boy. I would ask that you come to me in the future if you do plan on skipping out on what you believe to be an unreasonable detention. I don't think it will come up, but it would be best if we cleared things up from the beginning, rather than escalating things based on a misunderstanding."

Harry nodded and popped another lemon drop into his mouth. "Sure, Professor. You can clear up anything in the future just like you did today."

"Alright then, Harry," Albus said as he leaned back in his chair. "Off you go. You had best hurry to the Great Hall or you'll miss lunch entirely."

And with that, the boy gave a quick wave and strolled out of his office, seemingly without a care in the world.

Severus, on the other hand, barely even waited for the door to click shut before he began in what was just barely short of an outraged shout, "Albus, you can't let him just get away with everything like that!"

"Severus, be reasonable," Albus asked in a weary voice, momentarily feeling every one of his one-hundred and nine years. Dealing with one impossible child tearing down so many of his carefully developed plans without even trying was difficult enough. Putting up with Severus when he got into a mood like this and was unwilling to listen to reason pushed an already stressful morning beyond the bounds of anything he particularly wished to deal with. Unfortunately, the world had a way of seldom conforming to his wishes.

"_Be reasonable _you say," Severus sneered contemptuously. "So it is _reasonable_ to let a child get away with doing whatever he feels like. Pranking his professor, and mocking me to my face, regardless of how he tried to play it off. And then, not even happy with pushing you back to the mildest of rebukes, he threatens us to our faces, and it's _reasonable_ to just do whatever he wants out of fear of an eleven-year old? Will he be running Hogwarts by next week because you don't want to upset your precious _Boy-Who-Lived_? And all of this is somehow the _reasonable_ thing to do?"

"No Severus," Albus responded with a heavy sigh. "Be _reasonable_ because you are treating Harry as if he is simultaneously the mirror of his father, and yet as if he will respond to our actions as the boy I expected to come to Hogwarts. Uneducated in the ways of the Wizarding World. Uncomfortable in his fame. But that is not what we have gotten."

At this point Albus abruptly stood from his chair and began pacing agitatedly as he continued, "I say be reasonable because the threat you seem to believe I should have ignored is very real. This is no bluff. He is right that if he were thrown out of Hogwarts, which we cannot afford to do because we need to keep him close regardless, by the way. But if he were indeed thrown out of Hogwarts for refusing to attend a detention assigned to him with _no_ evidence supporting his guilt, the public outrage would be _immense_. I couldn't protect you because I would be too busy desperately holding onto my own position. You cannot ignore the fact that he not only holds real power over us in many ways, and more importantly, he knows it and is perfectly willing to use that power if we push him to it."

"But he _is_ guilty!" Severus cried out in frustration.

"Of course he's guilty, Severus," Albus answered in an annoyed tone as he dropped back into his seat. "We both know that. There was no true surprise when young Draco's potion was the one which ended up on the floor. And _no one_ is that polite in the face of such antagonism unless they are trying to get under someone's skin. Which he succeeded at quite well, I must add. As for the prank, even the other Gryffindors knew he was responsible, though they didn't seem to know how any more than I do."

Severus started to respond, but Albus interrupted him rather sternly, "But it doesn't _matter_ if he is guilty. No evidence of any wrongdoing exists, and without evidence, if I wish to have him see me as someone he can trust, I must side with him. And right now, you know as well as I do that very little matters more than having that boy grow to trust and believe in me. He _must_ accept my guidance to stay within the Light. Especially given his currently lack of respect for authority. That sort of thing could all too easily evolve into something very dangerous as he gets older without proper guidance.

"I wish you would learn to move past your own issues with Harry and separate your view of him from anything his father did to you almost two decades ago." Albus paused at this point and shook his head in annoyance as he continued, "Destroying an eleven year old's potion, Severus? Really? You are not a teenager anymore. Try not to get into petty prank wars with children. It does not reflect well upon you."

Severus didn't even try and deny it now that it was just the two of them, not that Albus expected any differently. Severus did have his good qualities, but he could be an incredibly petty man, and they both knew it and accepted it. Which meant there wasn't really any reason to dwell on it further.

So Albus continued in a more thoughtful tone, "But if you truly cannot move past that, I suppose learning to deal with some minor antagonism now might help him be just a little more ready for the future. But while he might grow to dislike you without any true problems, he must learn to trust me, or all might well be lost. So target him if you feel you must, but know that unless you come to me with absolute proof of wrongdoing, I will continue to side with Harry. Regardless of what we both know of his guilt."

Severus scowled even deeper and whirled around, his robes billowing as he moved towards the exit to the office. But just as he put his hand on the doorknob, he paused and harshly called out without turning around, "Trust is all very well, but you are also teaching him that he can walk over not just the rules, but even his professors and get away with it. Not just get away with it, but be supported in it, as long as he doesn't get caught. Keep teaching him that, and this is just the beginning. He will get worse and worse until you have a monster on your hands who cannot be controlled. You'll wish you had listened to me then. Do you really want to repeat history? To allow Hogwarts to produce another overpowered, entitled monster who thinks anything he is clever enough to get away with is acceptable?"

The door closed with a slam behind Severus and Albus leaned back in his comfortable chair with a sigh as he worked through his many contingencies, trying desperately to think of a way to truly salvage this whole situation before it spiraled even further out of his control.

He would remain there for quite some time.

**A/N:**

So yes, this is a very different response from Dumbledore to this sort of thing than in canon or in the vast majority of fanfiction. In canon, he didn't have to really do anything for Harry in order to gain Harry's trust. Harry trusted Dumbledore automatically and totally without any real effort on Dumbledore's part at all beyond 'saving' him from the Dursleys every year. Here obviously the situation is different.

And in most fanfics that bill themselves as having a manipulative!Dumbledore, for _some _reason, he ends up reacting to this sort of thing by immediately being as obvious as possible of his opposition to Harry. Because being blatantly obviously Harry's enemy is apparently the manipulative thing to do? How does that make sense? 90% of stories that call themselves manipulative!Dumbledore stories should really call themselves stupid!Dumbledore stories.

No, this is a Dumbledore who is manipulative, but who is also very smart. He wants Harry to trust him and allow him to guide him, so of course he will attempt to act in a way that encourages trust. Which means much of what he openly does will actually be in Harry's favor. Acting against Harry at this point gains him nothing but the same pointless antagonism Snape has earned.

Finally, please review! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake - I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.


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